


For All Who Remain

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: The Life and Love of a Man in a Duck Worshiping Household: the Vlog Series [1]
Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: 5+1 Things, A lot of people show up, Adoption, Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Alternate Universe - Human, Chronic Illness, Dating, Domestic Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, First Dates, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, I swear it's not all angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Magnus Bane Deserves Nice Things, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Not sure how explicit it will be yet, Rating May Change, Religion, Religious Guilt, Sex, Sick Alec Lightwood, Superstition, Terminal Illnesses, cystic fibrosis, vine references, vlogging - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:53:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24551149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Magnus has been dealing with Alec's absence for ten long years now.  Ten years since he lost his husband, and he thinks... maybe it's time to get back into vlogging.Aka a 5+1 fic that got very far away from me.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: The Life and Love of a Man in a Duck Worshiping Household: the Vlog Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1778533
Comments: 104
Kudos: 88





	1. 0.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by two things: 1) The question 'what would Malec's immortality/mortality tension look like in a mundane fic?' and 2) Heronstairs2014's series about a Will Herondale with cystic fibrosis.
> 
> An update note: the next six chapters are outlined but not fully written, and I don't know when they'll go up. For now you can consider this something of a pilot episode. If you really like what I'm doing, let me know!
> 
> [Here's some mood music if you want it....](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1f8JH8R240) and here we go!

When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for

All Who Remain

When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for

All Who Remain

And the light you gave the human race will go away...

~ _All Who Remain, Beware of Darkness_

***

They say that a ghost is a fragment of someone left behind after a violent or unjust death. Some piece of the human soul, fractured and separated from the part that can think and feel and change, the part that makes them _alive_. A splinter that has gotten forever stuck, stagnant and repeating the motions of life, in a world it wasn’t meant to inhabit. Something one dimensional, something trapped in a loop, something filled with one emotion to the exclusion of all else—sadness, or anger, something _flat_ and _unchanging_. 

Ghosts, they say, as they cross themselves and hold their breath passing cemeteries and set out offerings on alters to the dead, do not change their minds.

***

Magnus dreams about his mother, sometimes. Clad in a white dress, with a white hat with a wide brim pulled down over her face. She never comes to him, in those dreams—instead she sits and waits for him to come to her, suspended in midair on a rope swing tied to the branches of a towering tree, branches which sway a hundred feet above their heads. She’s still, always, until he speaks—then, like clockwork her hands rise, a brush in one, and she begins to brush the long, long black hair that sweeps over her shoulder. Down the brush goes, dragging over the hair that drapes across the rope that holds her up and skims the grass beneath the bare feet that hang, suspended, above the earth. Down… and then down again… and then down again… a slow, never-ending rhythm.

She doesn’t speak in return. Not in those dreams. She just listens, brushing her hair in long, sweeping strokes. And when he’s said everything he needs to say she sets down her brush, holds out her hands, and lets him tuck himself under her chin. She hugs him tight, so tight that he feels like he will never be unanchored, not ever, ever again, though he knows that isn't a wish she can grant.

It’s sweet, in an aching way. Like the fragrance of flowers crushed beneath bare toes. She’s there but she isn’t, like she wants to stay but can’t. And in all the dreams he’s had, he has never once seen her face.

He has a feeling that’s by design.

***

Magnus wakes with the feeling of lace pressed into his skin. White lace, like spider’s silk, and the brim of a white hat that bends and folds in just the right way to hide a face from view no matter which direction it’s approached from… he sighs, breathing out a long, slow breath. 

He imagines it dissipating, disappearing into the morning air the same way she disappeared from his arms with aught a word.

It’s not an unfamiliar dream. She’s not an unfamiliar ghost. She has been here many, many times before. And, though she’s the oldest, the one who has been with him the longest, she isn’t the only one who comes to him like this. Magnus has a menagerie of these ghosts, in fact. Like Will. Will, the boy forever young. And Raphael… the version of him that Magnus remembers from a time _before_ , at least. Then there's his step-father, all calloused hands awash with silty water… and, despite the fact that Magnus has done everything he can to strike her face from his memory, he can’t forget _Camille_. 

He thinks, sometimes, that calling Camille a ghost is a little too optimistic a term. She’s more like a poltergeist, slinging his belongings around—or, if Magnus is feeling particularly morose, a vampire. Something that hasn’t passed, at least not fully, but that has left a fragment behind to walk his memory and suck the life from him as it goes. She walks his mind, usually when he least wants her there, with all the cold presence of something that has been touched by death and likes it that way. 

Because of course she would. She’d make a perfect vampire. 

Magnus sighs, tired despite himself. His sheets are warm under the rays of the spring sun, a warmth that chases away the chill of memories of Camille. Unfortunately, however, the light only makes it more pronounced when he shifts to the side and comes across the _absence_ in the bed beside him.

Ten years to the day, and he still hasn’t quite gotten used to waking to an empty bed. It’s a remnant, a reminder that despite having ghosts aplenty, there is one specter who never visits. 

He sees his mother. He sees his step-father. Will, check. Raphael, check. Camille. _Check_. But the one person he misses the most? The one whose bed he shared? The one he would undoubtedly do anything to see again, if even for an instant?

…Not a single peep.

On his side now, Magnus stares absently at the place where someone should be. He senses more than feels the pressure of an old grief, familiar as a tailored suit, wrap around his chest. As it pinches tighter and tighter he pulls in a lungful of air and lets it out slowly, hoping to temper the pain.

It doesn’t work. He has a feeling that it’s going to be a long day. 

***

If he were asked to outline the shape of absence, Magnus would first tell you that it’s about six foot two. Usually, but not always, the tallest in the room. Of a width that could give a hug that could envelop you completely… if, of course, an absence could do such a thing.

Absence fills the space at the kitchen counter when he’s at the stove, the empty chair at the head of the table when he sits down to eat, the length of a mattress from the headboard to the footboard but only on the right side of the bed. It’s the gap between saying a goodbye, casting a wave, and then turning to the side to say—but it doesn’t matter. There’s no one there, and he walks back inside alone, closing the door a touch too forcefully behind himself.

Absence… he could spend hours describing it. The gap between two shoulder blades. The spaces between his fingers. The other end of the couch. The passenger seat of his car. The span between the shopping cart and the shelves. 

…Waking up with the red of a dress painted across his mind’s eye and realizing, all at once, that he dreams of his manipulative ex on the regular but has never once dreamed of—

—of—

—of…

…

…It’s watching your kids, now grown and well into their own lives, tell stories that form the shape of a man. It’s the circumference of the inside of a wedding ring, unworn. It’s making two servings of breakfast every time and packing one away for tomorrow. It’s standing, alone, at the mirror and putting on eyeliner in dead silence. Absence… god. Magnus knows it well. He has a hundred names for it. A thousand. A million. He’s lived with it for ten long years, and he’s grown accustomed to it.

And yet… as he sits with his morning eggs, a second serving cooling in the pan on the stove…

…it occurs to him that he's not sure if he’s measuring it right.

***

Magnus knows what they say about ghosts. He knows the myths, knows the legends. He knows the bits about fragments and violence and unjust deaths, about stagnation and loops and repetition, repetition, _repetition_.

Like a video reel, an auto-looping soundbite, he thinks, as he pulls out a dusty box from deep in the walk-in closet in the master bedroom. He pries the lid off with reverence, revealing a video camera dated by its bulk.

 _It_ _’s been a long time_ , he thinks.

***

The video coalesces like dew on early morning leaves. 

“Hello. Been a while, hasn’t it?” says the man on the screen. He breathes in deeply, a small smile on his face. 

“Ten years… wow. That’s a long time. A lot of things have happened since my last video.”

“I’ll start, I guess, by stating the obvious—last time I uploaded a video it was from a hospital room in Manhattan. I said in that video that I was going on hiatus. I was dealing with a personal crisis and I just didn’t have the time to vlog much. I said we were hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.”

“Well…”

“The worst happened. And I’ll be honest, it _wrecked me_. I couldn’t fathom doing something so trivial as vlogging in the wake of losing the person I loved most in the world. And then, once I started feeling better, I just… didn’t know how to come back. I decided, after a while, that I’d lost the piece of myself that could appear candidly in front of a camera. I took care of my family, I moved, I learned a new trade, and just… I moved on with my life.”

“But recently I’ve been thinking. A lot of things. Sometimes things about… about what people leave behind. Their possessions and their friends and family and the memories of them… but also all this, just… raw data? Pictures and emails and video and user accounts and—we live in an age where _everything_ is immortalized.”

“And I started to think… what a waste! What a fucking waste, to have all these raw files of people who have been lost and to never share them.”

“So I guess… I just…”

“…”

“…I want to show you a little piece of the life we lost ten years ago.”

“I think I’m ready.”

“This video is a compilation—five times my late husband, Alec, kept a straight face for the camera and one time I managed to capture his laugh.”

“Just a warning—you may cry while watching this.”

“Alexander… if you’re out there somehow, watching me right now from the other side… I’m sorry, sweetheart. Honestly, though, what did you expect?”

…The man on the screen tilts his head to the side, and for a moment all there is to hear is his slow, steady breathing. Then, as if an answer to his question came, he laughs out loud, shaking his head.

“Anyway. Let’s get this party started, why don’t we?”


	2. 1.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec and Magnus meet.

*1*

The first clip is a short one, barely four seconds long. 

It’s noisy, the sound of crowds humming on the recording the first thing to hit. The background is hard to discern—there is what looks like a fake lake-view backdrop, the kind used for photo shoots, propped up next to the edge of a folding table. Blurry people are moving around the edges of the backdrop, far off in the distance, but the focus is on the young man standing in the center of the frame, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. 

He is all of eighteen years old, and tall, with a slim build and pale skin, a stark contrast to his deep black hair. The video quality is good, but not quite good enough to pick up the blue of his eyes. It does, however, pick up the long, ratty sweatshirt he’s wearing over a pair of loose jeans, as well as his stony expression and the two figures who are braced against his left side, trying to push him over with all their might.

For three seconds the two of them push, the girl—a year or two younger than the man, but with the same dark hair—leaning her weight on her brother, who doesn’t budge an inch. Below her, at the man’s hip, is the other figure—another man, this one about twenty-three and clearly unrelated. He has light brown skin and spiked hair, and he falls dramatically to one knee as he pushes against the immobile man. 

The immobile man who, after the three seconds are up, walks out of frame with a put-upon sigh, leaving the other two to fall in a heap on the floor.

***

It happens at a little convention on the outskirts of Brooklyn. Magnus meeting the man who is to become the most important person in his life, that is.

Right now he sits on a panel of vloggers, idly waiting for the end of the vlogging Q and A. How oblivious he is, tapping his fingers against his leg as he listens to the woman to his right talk into her mic, to the fact that his bored brain is on the brink of coming up with the idea that will bring him face to face with his future husband. He doesn’t know what the stars have in store for him. The love, the pain, the desire and laughter and fear. He doesn’t know that this moment of excruciating boredom is going to change his life so thoroughly.

Would he have taken a different path if he knew what was coming? Would he have scorned fate’s design in order to protect his heart from the ache that was in his future? Who knows. He certainly doesn’t. He is oblivious as ever as he tilts his head slightly to the side, his eyes sweeping over the small crowd packed into the seats below the panel’s platform. The cogs in his head begin to turn.

How could he have known how important a moment of boredom and the brash _strike_ of inspiration could be?

***

“Hey, how many memory cards do we have with us?”

Raphael doesn’t so much as glance up from his phone as Magnus rounds on him, silk shoulder cape fluttering along in his wake. “Five,” the Hispanic man says.

“Ahhh. Isn’t that just _wonderful_ ,” Magnus sings. He hums happily, leaning over his dear friend. This is the best idea he’s had in the four years he’s been vlogging—it’s going to be a _major_ hit.

Assuming, of course, he can get Raphael on board.

“Well?” he asks, finally, when it’s become clear that Raphael has nothing else to contribute. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I need them?”

“Let me guess. You have one of your _ideas_ ,” Raphael says, voice dripping with sarcasm. He still hasn’t looked up.

Magnus grins, holding up his arms and turning out to face the aisle in front of the booth. “I _have_ had an idea, thank you for noticing! It’s a great idea, too. Something phenomenal, something spectacular, something—”

“Grandiose and overstated, I’m sure,” Raphael finishes for him, but while his phone is still out and his eyes are still down he is clearly paying attention.

Magnus turns and taps his own nose, his grin only growing wider. “There’s a photography booth around here somewhere, right?”

“…Yes.” Raphael finally raises his gaze, eyeing Magnus with clinical interest. “What are you thinking?”

“You’ll see!” Magnus calls, and then heads off into the meandering crowds, a man on a mission.

***

Despite the fact that Raphael is only helping because Magnus promised him dinner after the convention, gathering supplies and setting everything up goes as smooth as butter. A few adjustments here, a tweet there, and suddenly Magnus is at the epicenter of a crowd of fans, feeling right at home.

“Take a number,” Raphael says, bored, holding up the scraps of paper that he scribbled a count of one to twenty on. “First twenty fans only. You snooze, you lose.”

The numbers go quick, as Magnus waits eagerly in front of the backdrop that he managed to finagle from the Fairchild Photography booth down the way. The lights are bright, but not as bright as his smile as he takes in the people eagerly lining up for their numbers. He has never been more thankful for his small but loyal following as he is right now.

“Number one?” he calls, once Raphael gives him the go-ahead. A man steps forward, and Magnus grins, beckoning him into a huddle.

Soon enough, the camera starts to roll.

***

It’s a simple one, this idea that Magnus has had. Youtubers and vloggers have been making compilation videos of photos taken with fans for as long as youtubers and vloggers with fanbases have existed. What makes Magnus’s idea revolutionary, however, is the _interaction_ —the fans get to choose a pose, they get to direct Raphael behind the camera, they get to be _involved_ in the making of the video reel. No longer a cookie-cutter fan-interaction, it has an extra level of play and fun that Magnus has been itching for. 

He’s not disappointed. His fans are wonderful, all bright and expressive, if occasionally awkward in front of the camera. He shares faux shootouts and waltz dips and titanic poses with them, laughing and signing photos between takes. He doesn’t think he can do this all the time, for every fan, but twenty is a good number and he’s still as jazzed several hours later when the last number is called as he was for the first.

The last number, number twenty, is a girl just shy of woman, sixteen or seventeen years old. She’s wearing a brilliant smile, one that is sharp, and fun, and fierce. “Hi,” she says. Then she gestures behind her to the man standing back beside Raphael, looking out at the crowd. “I don’t mean to break the rules or anything, but would it be okay if we posed with my brother?”

Magnus only has to think about it for a moment. He’s never been one for rules, and he’s interested to see where this goes. “Sure!” he says, and the girl goes to punch her brother in the arm to get his attention. The brother winces, turning back to face them, and—

***

Once upon a time, Magnus Bane had a whirlwind affair with a woman he thought was The One. 

She was beautiful. She was charming. She always said just the right thing, at just the right time; words about how well the two of them fit together danced from her rosy lips. 

Magnus was with her for two and a half years before he began to realize that something was… off. 

She hid things, you see. She talked her way around absences, turning his questions back around on him until he thought he was the one in the wrong. Her charm was his downfall, as he believed in the honeyed lies that spilled forth from her tongue. He was blind to her true intentions—he was blind to everything but her beauty. 

In the end it turned out that beauty was the beauty of airbrushed models on magazine covers—all powdered and contoured and curled to perfection. Fake, from the surface of her skin to the blackened heart in her chest.

It’s been three years since Magnus cut their relationship off, but still her cold fingers linger at his throat.

***

Magnus has gotten good at not thinking about Camille. Or, if he accidentally does, he’s gotten good at brushing the thoughts away before they start to fester. His heart, once shattered, has been glued back together—sloppily, because it’s hard to mend your own broken heart, but he’s done his best. He may not be ready for a real relationship, hasn’t dared date seriously since Camille, but he has gotten to a point where he can flirt without fear of hurting himself worse.

Which is good, because he’s not sure he has the wherewithal to resist flirting with the absolutely gorgeous young man standing in front of him. Has Magnus ever mentioned he has a thing for blue eyes and black hair? Because Magnus definitely has a thing for blue eyes and black hair. 

“Does your brother have a name?” he asks, once it’s become clear that he’s been looking a little too closely for a little too long. He talks often about his bisexuality in his vlogs—still, he hopes he isn’t coming on too strong.

It must be fine, because the girl smiles a little wider, her eyes glittering as she looks between the two men. Her brother—“Alec,” she says—is slowly growing redder and redder under Magnus’s stare. He coughs, clearing his throat, before he reaches a hand hesitantly forward. 

“You’re… Magnus, is that right?” he asks.

Magnus tilts his head to the side, reaching one bejeweled hand forward. “That I am, darling. That I am,” he says, and that is the beginning of the end.

***

It takes surprisingly little for the two of them, Magnus and the girl (Isabelle), to talk Alec in front of the camera. He’s stoic, unsure, as they stand him where they want him, but he allows himself to be positioned. 

“Is it okay if I touch you?” Magnus asks, once they have the pose idea consolidated. He catches Alec’s blue eyes with his own, staring intently. His hand lingers over Alec’s hip, indicating where he’d touch if given a yes.

Alec’s eyes go wide, glancing down at Magnus’s ringed fingers. “Uh—I mean—yeah, that’s, that’s fine?”

Excellent. Magnus grins. “Okay. I’m just going to pretend to push on you—you can stop us at any time if you’re not feeling it,” he says, because it’s best to cover his bases. Oddly enough, though, he has a feeling that Alec won’t need to call this off. Strange as it sounds, this is… comfortable. Easy. 

Magnus flits his tongue out across his lips, watching Alec watching him. He waits until Alec nods his understanding before he calls for Raphael to start rolling. Then he sets himself against Alec, both hands flat against his side, desperately trying to hide the grin that graces his lips as a flush takes over Alec’s cheeks.

It’s beautiful. It’s kismet. They pull it off perfectly in one take.

***

It all comes to an end much too soon. Magnus chats a bit with Isabelle—Izzy—and signs a photo for her. She’s bright, interesting—the kind of person Magnus would love to befriend.

Her brother, on the other hand… he has hardly taken his pretty blue eyes off of Magnus in all the time they’ve been standing there, and Magnus must admit that he’s been just as bad. He waits until the people still waiting for autographs start to get antsy in the line behind the siblings, and then Magnus whips out a second photo, scrawling his signature and, on impulse, his number. He hands it to Alec with a wink. 

Alec flushes once more, stuttering out a thank you. Magnus can hardly hold in a giddy laugh—it’s going to be fun to flirt with this one. So easily flustered, so unused to the attention…

It’s hardly twenty minutes later when he receives a text. _What would you say to dinner?_ it says.

…Oh dear.

***

The text sits unanswered for a good long while. All through the afternoon and all through the evening, just sitting and waiting and weighing Magnus down.

See, this is usually where Magnus would start second guessing, start backing out. Flirtations are one thing—dinner is _quite_ another. 

…And yet. There’s something about Alec that makes him pause without sending his usual _sorry dear, not interested in that_. 

Magnus sits in his loft later that night and pulls out the footage to upload and send to Ragnor, who has been editing all his videos for him for several years now. He’s avoiding his phone, he knows he is, but he doesn’t want to face that _whatever it is_ that makes Alec seem so different from all the rest. 

He stares at the screen, watching the footage roll as it uploads. As he does, however… as he does he finds himself lingering over that last pose. Number twenty… the last pair to pose with him today…

He stares, pausing the footage on a close-up of Alec’s face.

That something, it’s… something _vibrant_. Alec was quiet… kind of reserved… _clearly_ uncomfortable in front of the camera… just, all in all the kind of guy who would normally run from Magnus and his flamboyant nature like a rabbit runs from wildfire. 

But he didn’t. He didn’t run. He posed with them, and accepted Magnus’s number, and asked him out, and there’s just… there’s something there, just under his skin. Something that is ready, eager even. Youth, life, vitality maybe… something that is just _this close_ to bursting free.

Alec took Magnus by surprise with his offer of a date, a point blanc offer that held the weight of sincerity behind it. And Magnus… well…

…perhaps he’ll surprise himself in turn by saying yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got this one done fast! Yay! Hope you like it!
> 
> Cheers, everyone!!


	3. 2.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth comes out.

*2.*

The second clip is longer, dated a few months after the first.

It begins with a close-up of a generic faucet, poised above a generic porcelain sink, in a generic apartment bathroom. The water is running, and a brown hand flicks its fingers through the stream. The camera shifts, catching the hand in the mirror above the sink, rising until a man—the same brown-skinned man as the last clip—is in frame. He runs his wet fingers through artfully mussed hair, examining his reflection as he does.

“So,” he says, poking at the smudged eyeliner under his eye. “I’m in my dear lover’s bathroom, you know the one. Still not going to say his name, because it’s not that serious, but you know who I’m talking about. First time I’ve stayed over, snowstorm you know, it was a whole thing. Point is, I’m in this bathroom and I… I need some opinions.”

The man turns, panning around the rest of the little room. There is a neat clothes hamper in the corner, fancy soap in a dish next to the sink, and a shower with a plain black shower curtain, which the man steps toward.

“It’s a pretty normal bathroom, right? Like, you don’t see anything seriously off, right? Well, as you know, I don’t trust people who have completely normal bathrooms. So I started snooping, and…”

With a dramatic sweep of his hand, the man pulls back the shower curtain, bringing the camera close to the little shelves in the corner and zeroing in on the bottles hanging out there.

“Here, look. See this? This says three-in-one. It’s shampoo, conditioner, _and_ bodywash. Now, that’s not really noteworthy—it’s the bathroom of a couple of college boys, after all. I’ve seen worse. But the thing that gets me is that right here, right next to it, is a bottle of Redken shampoo.”

The camera shakes, the man’s voice growing louder as he says, “What the heck! This is salon-grade, professional shampoo _and_ the matching conditioner _and_ a hydrating masque! This is true human dichotomy—three-in-one _wash your everything at once_ horse shampoo versus the costs-more-than-most-people-make-in-an-hour salon shampoo, and I cannot for the _life_ of me figure out which of the boys in this apartment uses which.”

A sigh gusts across the microphone, and two brown fingers come into frame, nudging the bottles.

“Like. Okay. My lover, you know the one—he’s beautiful. Obviously. But I get the feeling that it’s effortless, like he actually has no idea how stupidly attractive his gorgeous face is. So it would make a lot of sense if the horse shampoo is his. But on the other hand… he’s so meticulous, guys. He puts so much thought and effort into everything he does. So why wouldn’t he use the best of the best to take care of himself?” The camera swings around, catching an unnecessarily close close-up of the man’s nose. “I need opinions on this because I am at a _complete_ loss.”

The camera turns back around, and the man steps out of the shower, pulling the shower curtain closed once more. “Now that that’s over and done with, I am going to go look for some advil to take for the massive headache I have because I did _not_ sleep well and—oh dear _god_.”

The camera, which was moving back to the mirror as the man talked, freezes on a shot of the inside of the medicine cabinet. Instead of anything resembling medicine, the shelves are covered in little rubber ducks, all artfully arranged around a framed photograph of an absolutely _massive_ rubber duck inflatable.

“What… the fuck… have I stumbled into,” the man whispers. One brown hand reaches forward, gently prodding a duck with a little suit and tie. “Is this… is this a duck shrine? Is this a duck worshiping household? I can’t—I cannot do this. Oh my god. Why do they have a duck shrine in their medicine cabinet. Why—”

He’s interrupted from further freakouts by the sound of coughing. Startled, he pulls back, knocking a handful of ducks off the shelf with a myriad of squeaks.

“I heard that! Stop touching the ducks!” a voice calls from another room, but before the man can hurl back an indignant reply to the effect that he wouldn’t be _touching_ the ducks if they didn’t _have_ the ducks, the coughing begins again. This time it doesn’t stop.

“Well, _that_ doesn’t sound good,” the man says, and the camera pans toward the bathroom door. Through the door and then down the hall it goes, until it and the man holding it all but barge into what appears to be a bedroom. Inside two young men sit on a bed—one is the tall, black-haired one from the first clip, the other is entirely new, with blond hair and bright eyes.

The blonde looks up first. “…Can I help you?” he asks. He has one hand on the other man’s back, the other hand holding a strange device hooked up by a tube to a little humming machine.

The man with the camera gestures to the dark-haired man, who is still coughing convulsively, barely able to gasp air between bouts. He has a bowl in his lap, and as the camera watches he manages to cough something entirely unpleasant up into it.

The blonde rolls his eyes. “He’s fine. Just give him a minute.”

As requested, a minute goes by, and the coughing slowly comes to an end. The dark-haired man raises his head, his face flushed from the exertion. He wipes his mouth with a tissue, raising an eyebrow. “Really?” he asks dryly, gesturing to the camera.

“Are you okay?” the man with the camera asks, as if he’s forgotten the camera is on at all.

A nod. The dark-haired man opens his mouth, looking uneasily between the camera and the man holding it, before the blonde pipes up with a, “Hey man, come on. Turn the camera off.”

“Right. Sorry.” And just like that, the recording comes to an end.

***

“All I’m saying is that it would be _nice_ to have a _friend_ with a _way out_ if things _just happen_ to go sour. …Which they will, because this is actually a terrible idea and I don’t know why I said yes.”

Catarina sighs, her cheek propped up on her fist. She’s sitting on Magnus’s couch, clearly exhausted after a full shift at the hospital. Still, she listens as Magnus panics, which is more than most of his friends are doing at this point. 

He’s been panicking a lot in the last week. Mostly because he hasn’t been on a date in over three years. Which would be fine, it really would, if Alec wasn’t _late_.

“Magnus, I love you, but would you please sit down?”

“He could be here any second!” Magnus protests as Catarina gestures him toward the couch. He fiddles with his cuff links as he paces back toward the front window. “He’s half an hour late, but he hasn’t texted to say he’s canceling, which either means he’s on his way or he’s standing me up. Oh, god—which do you think it is? Am I being stood up right now?”

Magnus whirls on Catarina, who blinks her eyes open. “What was the question?” she asks, yawning.

Okay, so strike the listening part. Whatever. She’s here, and that, at least, helps. Sort of. A little. 

Okay, so it’s not really helping at all. Magnus is a bona fide mess.

Magnus swallows, snapping his fingers nervously back and forth in a soothing repetitive rhythm as he tries to get himself under control. He’ll give it five more minutes. Five minutes, and then he’s texting Alec to say _forget it, missed your chance, don_ _’t text back_.

***

The doorbell rings with literal seconds to spare.

“Answer it,” Catarina hisses, as Magnus freezes in place. It takes literally all his willpower to bend his knees and walk toward the door, but Magnus manages, readying himself to deliver a lecture on tardiness.

Alec, he finds, is leaning on the doorframe, slightly out of breath. His face is flushed, whether from exertion or embarrassment Magnus can’t tell. Magnus raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry, ran here,” Alec says. He’s taking careful breaths, trying to regulate his air intake. “Um. I’m also sorry I’m late, I lost track of time and I know that’s a really bad first impression to make so I’m—I’m sorry.”

He sounds nearly as nervous as Magnus feels. Magnus feels his hackles lower just slightly. “…You’re forgiven,” he says. “I’d invite you in, but our reservation is forfeit if we wait too much longer.”

“Right. Sorry again. Are you ready?” Alec asks. For as disheveled as he appears, he’s still got enough whits about him to drag his eyes down Magnus’s shirt.

Magnus would preen under the attention if he weren’t having a second wave of doubts crash over his head. “Meet you outside?” he asks, and slowly edges the door closed in Alec’s confused face. Then he turns to Catarina, all pleading eyes, and says, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Catarina smiles at him. It’s not unkind, but there is steel in her eyes—she can and will push him out the door herself. “Magnus… just go,” she says, giving him a little shove.

“Fine,” he says. “But you’d better pull through if I bail.”

She rolls her eyes, nudging him the rest of the way through the door.

***

So they go out to dinner. And dinner, despite all the effort that Magnus put into finding an outfit that is the perfect balance of playful and hot, goes… not great. It goes, in a word, disastrous.

Magnus’s eye twitches as he stares down at the stain seeping down his chest. He should not have gone for the red wine—it clashes horribly with the green, teal, and gold pinstripes of his shirt. 

Across the table from him Alec is quiet, staring down into the plate of food in front of him. He hasn’t been very talkative all evening, Magnus carrying most of the conversations, but now he’s gone completely silent and Magnus winces.

“I’m sorry about Richard,” Magnus says. It’s damage-control, the only thing he can do at this point aside from texting Catarina and bailing altogether. “It really wasn’t as bad as he makes it out to be, I promise. Definitely not worth a glass of wine to the face.”

Alec raises his eyes, and Magnus is relieved to see a small smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “You mean you don’t usually, what did he say… ‘steal the best minutes of life’ from your partners?”

Magnus snorts. “God, no. Besides, we were fifteen. I wasn’t a fully grown human person yet.”

There is silence for a beat, and then, against all odds, Alec begins to laugh.

It’s a beautiful laugh, Magnus thinks, as he realizes that he hasn’t heard Alec’s laugh before. It’s bright and genuine and Alec expresses it with his entire body, curling over his stomach and ducking his head. Unfortunately, however, the laugh seems to catch something in his chest and in a moment he’s coughing, pressing his face into his elbow.

“Sorry,” he says a moment later, taking a sip of his water.

“Are you feeling okay?” Magnus asks. The cogs in his head are whirring as he looks Alec up and down. Something is off. Something has _been_ off.

Alec doesn’t look up, still sipping water. “Yeah, sorry. I think I’m coming down with something.”

He’s trying to brush it off as nothing, but Magnus’s brow immediately furrows. “Oh. Why didn’t you say something? We could have tried another day.”

There’s a peculiar twist to Alec’s lips when he glances back up. He opens his mouth as if to respond but ends up just shrugging a shoulder instead.

“Well. Perhaps in that case I should take you home,” Magnus says. Alec’s shoulders drop, but he nods, allowing Magnus to call the waiter back for their check.

***

Alec’s home is a dingy apartment near the university, and Magnus hums as he walks Alec up to the door. “Well!” he says, once there. He doesn’t mean to be dismissive, but it’s been a long, frustrating night and Alec deserves to get some sleep. “I should get going. I have a cat to feed.”

He then pivots on his heel and is about to walk away when a voice calls out to him.

“Hey—I, um, had a lot of fun tonight. Can we… would it be too much to ask that we do this again?”

Magnus spins once more, his heart picking up at the sight of Alec’s hopeful eyes. “…Give it a do-over?” he asks, and Alec nods eagerly. Magnus feels a slow, easy grin spreading across his face.

Yeah. Yeah, they can do that. And maybe… and this is a very precarious maybe… this romance thing will prove to not be a mistake after all. 

***

He’s delighted to find that the next time they meet, things go better. They don’t run into any pissed exes, and Alec is looking a lot more lively than he did the last time, though he’s still got a lingering cough. He promises that he’s not contagious when Magnus asks about it, as if that’s what Magnus is concerned about.

At the end of their second date, Alec walks with Magnus back to Magnus’s loft, talking all the while. When he pauses at the stairs up, he catches Magnus’s gaze and Magnus’s breath catches in his throat. It’s just… he has this _light_ in his eyes, something vibrant and eager and strong, as he leans in inch by inch.

“Feeling bold, are we?” Magnus asks, tilting his head to the side. He would normally play a little harder to get, but as Alec’s blue eyes flit down to his lips he decides to _hell_ with it and meets him more than halfway there.

The night after that is a blur of shed clothing and bare skin and laughter, and Magnus falls asleep with a warm body pressed against his back.

The last thing he thinks before falling asleep is that he could get used to this.

***

When Magnus wakes, he’s alone in bed. He fumbles his way upright, scrubbing the remnants of his eyeliner from his eyes as he squints around the loft. 

No sign of Alec. Damn.

Magnus yawns, and stumbles into the shower to wake himself up. He needs to get a video up sometime today, which means that he needs to record it and get the footage to Ragnor before Ragnor goes to bed. He doesn’t have anything planned but he might have enough fanmail from this week to do a fanmail video and—

He pauses in the middle of his kitchen, halfway through pouring out a cup of coffee. He sets down the mug and reaches for the piece of paper that is taped to the machine.

_Sorry to run. Call me soon?_

Ah, so there was a sign after all. Magnus lets a soft, private smile curl across his lips.

Yeah… he’ll be doing exactly that, thank you very much.

***

After that, things are smooth going. Sweet yet casual. They talk a little and come to an agreement to keep everything open—if anyone wants to date anyone else, it’s totally fine, because they’re not exclusive. Alec never stays the night, and Magnus is okay with that because he feels like he’s teetering, braced on the very edge of having feelings deep enough to drown in, and while he doesn’t want to give up Alec and their fun times just yet he’s wary of giving in to those feelings. Wary of opening his heart up once again.

“Not really a boyfriend,” he says, when Tessa asks him how he and his new boyfriend are doing. “It’s complicated.”

Tessa nods as if she understands, which she probably does. She’s currently engaged to be married to the adopted brother and best friend of the first boyfriend she had in high school, which is already a lot to unpack. Magnus doesn’t even want to go into the whole ‘said high school boyfriend died at sixteen and left the two of them behind’ part of it.

“Well I, for one, think you should spend more time planning your new series of videos and maybe less time complicating things that don’t need to be complicated,” Ragnor says. He’s blunt as always, though when Catarina elbows him in the side he amends, “Though it is nice to see you enjoying someone’s company instead of stressing about it for once.”

The table goes quiet for a few seconds, a moment of silence for the Magnus who died the day Camille broke his heart three years ago. Magnus rose again, he always does, but even he can admit that he’s been more tentative, more guarded, since he rose from those ashes.

“You really like Alec, don’t you?” Catarina asks, breaking the silence a moment later. A spark of concern lights her eyes as she reaches for Magnus’s arm, giving it a squeeze.

“Yeah,” Magnus admits, feeling a squeeze in his throat. “He’s nothing like she was, though. At least… I think so. It’s just… it’s hard to tell because she was wonderful until she wasn’t, you know?”

Tessa hums in agreement, Catarina murmurs a soft ‘I know, hon’, and even Ragnor and Raphael give Magnus understanding nods. “You introduce him to us and we’ll intervene if it looks like history will repeat itself,” Ragnor says, and Magnus cracks a smile despite himself.

***

Unfortunately, speak of Camille and she shall appear. She’s like the devil in that way. Also in a few other ways, not least of which is the blood-red dress that clings to her hourglass figure, but Magnus isn’t here to judge. He’s not here to not-judge, either, though. This is his dream, so really he should be able to judge if he wants to judge. 

He doesn’t, but the point still stands.

She’s sitting across a room full of shadowed figures, the only light a spotlight illuminating the table she sits at, brilliant rays catching at the silken folds of her dress. She has a wineglass in one hand, and the reflection of her dress on the glass makes it look like it’s filled with blood. Unperturbed, she waits with a knowing look as Magnus sighs heavily and begins to stalk across the floor toward her.

“Good evening, Magnus,” she says as he takes his usual seat across from her.

“Get on with it,” he grunts. He keeps his eyes on the shadowed silhouettes around them, never turning fully to face the woman in front of him.

She doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, if anything she seems amused, laughing a tinkling laugh. “Magnus, baby. Loosen up. Have some fun.”

Fun. That’s what he was to her, just a bit of fun. He grits his teeth, refusing to play her games.

That doesn’t stop her from setting down her cards, a sharp smile curving up the corner of her mouth. “He lies, you know,” she says, looking away as if disinterested in the whole situation. “He hides… and he lies… such a sweet boy, but he’s tangled himself up in his own little web, hasn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Magnus says. _Stiff upper lip_ , he tells himself, finally turning his glare on Camille.

She only smiles, sipping from her wineglass. She’s so poised, so self-assured, as she reminds him without saying a word that it takes one to know one. Magnus pushes to his feet and stumbles away as she smiles, and smiles, and smiles.

***

The truth comes out the day after the first bit New York City snowstorm of the year.

It’s been about a month since Alec’s ‘cold’, and the cough is still lingering. Magnus notices it more and more as the movie rolling in front of them goes on. Alec is trying to suppress it, keep it down, but Magnus can feel it as Alec’s shoulders hunch under his arm. 

The plan is simple. Movie then sex. They’re at Alec’s apartment, alone, because Alec’s roommate—his brother—is out at some extra-curricular or other. It’s not the first time Magnus has been inside, but it is the first time that he’s noticed the number of pill bottles hidden in the box under the coffee table.

Magnus frowns as Alec shifts again, clearing his throat. He’s about to ask if something is wrong—if maybe Alec has caught something else—when the door behind them slams open.

“God, it’s freezing balls out there!” says a voice, one which Magnus reluctantly recognizes as Chase. Or was it Trace?

Alec twists, taking in his brother. “You’re home early,” he accuses.

Trace rolls his eyes, shaking snow off his hat. “I sent you a text, not my fault you didn’t check your phone. There’s a storm coming in, a big one. I wouldn’t suggest trying to drive home right now, honestly.”

Magnus sighs. There go his plans for the evening.

Things are awkward after that, with Chase in the room with them. Alec bows out early, saying that he’s going to sleep in his brother’s room—Jace, he calls him—and that Magnus is free to take his own room for the night. He then disappears down the hallway. After a moment a bedroom door clicks closed.

Well. Magnus stands, going to the window to peer out. He can hardly see anything, the snow is coming down so thick. He sighs. Then he goes to hole himself up in Alec’s room, unwilling to spend an entire evening sitting in awkward silence with his not-boyfriend’s brother.

He thinks, for a moment, about snooping about. He’s sure there’s something in here worth snooping for. But the bed is neatly made, and the floor is clean, and Alec had left a pair of pajamas on the pillow for him, and he can’t bring himself to violate Alec’s trust by going through his personal belongings.

He can, however, bring himself to snoop in the bathroom come morning, which brings him to the place where he’s face to face with Alec in Jace’s room, and the two of them are staring at each other, and he doesn’t know what’s going on or what to do.

“Hey man, come on. Turn the camera off,” Jace says.

“Right. Sorry,” Magnus says back, swiping to end the video. The awkward silence stretches like taffy until he finds the strength to gesture at the _thing_ Jace is now holding out for Alec.

Alec takes it, fitting what must be a mouthpiece into his mouth and breathing in. He then takes it out again to say, “Sorry. I… we can talk after I brush my teeth?”

Magnus nods in a slight daze, turning to leave the room.

He’s not sure why he picks Alec’s room to sit in as he waits. There’s something familiar and comforting about it, though he can’t put his finger on exactly what it is. Still, he’s on edge when Alec finishes with whatever he’s doing and goes to brush his teeth, edging into the room a moment later.

“Hi,” he says. Then, before Magnus can ask, he says, “It’s a nebulizer treatment. For my lungs.”

Magnus soaks that in. Then he prompts, “Because…”

Alec isn’t meeting his eyes. “I have cystic fibrosis,” he says, “And eventually it’s going to kill me.”


	4. 3.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Settling in for the long haul.

*3.*

The third clip is lighthearted, a moment between two people that just so happens to be on tape.

It begins with the same brown man, his hair spiked toward heaven and streaked with blond, all of it overlaid with a sincere helping of glitter that catches the light as the man beams. He’s standing in what must be his living room, his back to a wall with a large painting of a cat on it. He holds the camera before him, excitement oozing from his pores.

“Alright everyone. Magnus here. I have something very special planned for today’s vlog, a special guest if you will. I’m not going to keep you in suspense because…”

Giving the camera a wink, Magnus takes a sweeping step to the side, bringing the black-haired man from before into view. He nudges up against the black-haired man’s side, elbowing him eagerly until the man slips a hand from his pocket and twines their fingers together.

“…it’s time to meet my boyfriend!” Magnus grins, wriggling his eyebrows at the camera. “Yes, the illusive lover and I have taken it one step further! We are officially out of the dating pool, so to speak. Which means that it’s finally time to reveal that which I’ve kept under wraps since our whole affair began—the name of the most precious man in my life. Without any further ado…”

Magnus’s grin seems to get impossibly wider as he draws the two of them even close together, holding the man’s hand up victoriously. “Everyone, this is Alec—”

Alec lifts the hand from his other pocket to wave.

“And Alec, this is everyone! Say hi!”

Alec blinks. “Hi?”

For a moment after that, all is quiet. Magnus pans the camera between the two of them, back and forth and back and forth between his still-beaming face and Alec’s stoic one. After a few passes, Magnus’s grin begins to falter. Finally, the camera comes to a pause on Alec.

“Aren’t you going to smile?” Magnus asks.

Alec raises an eyebrow. “I wasn’t planning to.”

The camera jumps to Magnus, who is now frowning, before it jumps back to Alec. “Smile for the camera!” Magnus’s voice commands.

Still Alec stares, his face carefully neutral. “I’d rather not.”

A shuffle as Magnus adjusts the camera. “Oh, come on. Do it for the views!”

“Nope.”

“Smile!”

“No.”

“ _Please_? For me?”

“Still not going to, sorry.”

“…You’re not sorry.”

“You are correct, I am not.”

Magnus huffs, letting go of Alec’s hand and turning around so he’s face to face with his boyfriend. He holds the camera up to head-height. “Fine. I’ll just have to _make_ you smile.”

“And how do you plan to do that?” Alec asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’m going to tell the funniest joke you’ve ever heard. Ready? Here goes.” Magnus clears his throat, leaning in. “Why don’t oysters donate to charity?”

“I don’t know, why _don_ _’t_ oysters donate to charity?”

“Because they’re _shellfish_. Eh? Eh?”

“Funny,” Alec says, face completely straight.

Magnus groans, waving a hand toward Alec. “And _yet_. You’re going to make me pull out the big guns, aren’t you?”

Alec shrugs. “Guess so.”

“Why did Adele cross the road? To say hello from the other side!”

“Ha.” Alec turns to leave.

“ _Nothing_?! You can’t be serious. Wait, no, don’t go, I need to try again. How does a penguin build its house? _Igloos_ it together. No? Fine. What do you call a belt made of watches? A waist of time! Or how about this one: What’s the action like at a circus?”

“In-tents.”

“In—hey!” The camera shakes, Magnus’s laughter overtaking him. He’s clearly trying to sound mad but he’s failing miserably as he says, “You’re not only refusing to smile for me but now you’re _stealing_ my _punchlines_?!” 

Alec shrugs again. “I’ve heard that one before.”

“God, I hate you right now! Maybe I’ll just _tickle_ a smile out of you!”

Staring straight past the camera and at Magnus, Alec’s face goes stony, even stonier than it was before. “Try it and you’re going in a headlock,” he says.

Magnus waves him off. “As if you could get me in a _headlock_. I dare you to tr—”

With hardly a warning, the camera suddenly flips, Magnus fumbling for it. When he manage to bring it up again Alec has an arm around his throat, holding him steady in a headlock. Magnus wheezes in surprise.

“We’ll be back after this short commercial break,” Alec says to the camera, sounding wholly unconcerned. 

“Aaand cut!” Magnus says, still wheezing. He pats Alec’s arm. “That was great, babe. We’ll take a few and then do another take or two.” 

Here he pauses, waiting for Alec to release him. When he realizes that Alec still has him held fast, he begins to wriggle in his hold. 

Still, Alec doesn’t let him go. 

Magnus huffs. “Oh, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” Alec asks, all innocence. 

Magnus taps on his arm with his free hand, trying to pull away. “Babe. Alexander. My sweet. My dearest darling cinnamon roll. Blessed sunrise on the morning of my life. Light of my every waking moment—”

Magnus is too focused on trying to get free that he doesn’t pick up the _look_ that is creeping into Alec’s eye. The camera, on the other hand, catches it full force. It’s something mischievous, something playful, and it’s suddenly very plain to see why he and Magnus fit together so well. 

In that moment, Alec becomes the boyfriend who stands toe to toe with Magnus Fucking Bane, glitter and bad jokes and all.

He cuts Magnus off mid-endearment. “What do you say to no more takes,” he says, bending his neck to kiss Magnus’s temple, “but I do this?”

“What—” Magnus starts, only to be interrupted by the hands that fall from his neck down to his chest. They palm his ribs, two twin sets of exploratory fingers, sliding down toward his stomach and pulling their bodies close together as they go. 

Magnus lets out a moan, nearly dropping the camera a second time. When he manages to catch it the angle is all off and he’s laughing, high and excited. “Well!” he says. “Maybe you should have offered that from the— _oh_.” He squirms, hardly able to finish his thought. “—From the beginning, instead of headlocking me.”

Alec, barely in frame, just shrugs his shoulders once more. “I like you in my arms. Besides, if you hadn’t threatened to tickle me I never would have had to headlock you in the first place.”

“Touché, my dear, _touché_ ,” Magnus gasps.

“Turn the video off,” Alec murmurs into his ear, making eye contact with the camera as if daring it to watch.

Magnus gladly does just that.

***

It takes a moment to comprehend the blunt words and the fact that Alec is being dead (haha—oh god) serious about this. It takes another moment to piece everything together, all the little clues that Alec gave, however unwillingly. Alec’s ‘cold’ and the coughing and the late start to their first date and the fact that Alec never stayed the night all come together all at once, and Magnus can’t _believe_ he missed the signs.

“So… on our first date…” he says, gesturing for Alec to take a seat beside him on the bed.

“It was a bad day. I’m sorry, I should have said something,” Alec sighs, carefully sitting down. He looks nervous but determined, his brow set in a hard line.

“Why didn’t you?” Magnus asks tentatively. He’s not sure what cystic fibrosis is, but Alec has made it clear that it’s something serious. A chronic illness, maybe? God, hopefully not cancer. Magnus has had enough of cancer. “Did I… was there some reason you thought you couldn’t? Something I said, or…?”

“It’s not you.”

Magnus nods, folding his hands together to fiddle with some of the rings on his fingers. He doesn’t quite know how to approach this whole situation, what questions he’s welcome to ask. When Jem was sick he was very patient with everyone, even strangers with invasive questions. Alec isn’t Jem, though.

Still, Magnus thinks he’s pretty safe in asking for some clarification, at least. 

“It’s a genetic disorder,” Alec says. He’s staring straight ahead, his back ramrod straight, like he’s a soldier at attention. “My lungs and a few other things are fucked. I’ve had it all my life, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“And you didn’t tell me because…”

Alec is so cold, so distant. Magnus purses his lips, listening to his lover’s stony voice say, “I didn’t want it to dictate our relationship—I thought if I could make an impression as _me_ rather than as my illness we could have something more… genuine.”

Ah. “I see,” Magnus says, though he’s not sure he does. He’s never been the kind of person to hide away parts of himself. At least, nothing like this. If people ask about his mother, or his sexuality, or Camille, he tells them. But then again, is being open the same as being vulnerable? He wears his past like studs on his jacket, daring anyone to try and touch him. He’s not afraid of making people uncomfortable, of scaring them off. 

But something like this… he bites his lip. Alec holding back and Magnus speaking out might be two sides to the same coin, both mechanisms they use to protect themselves. He can’t fault Alec for that.

“I know this is a lot,” Alec says. He’s still not looking at Magnus. “I’m not expecting anything. It’s not like we’ve said wedding vows, right?”

“…You’re giving me an out,” Magnus says. He searches Alec’s face, looking for some sign of what Alec wants, what Alec thinks of this.

But Alec only nods, giving nothing away. “We’ll help you dig out your car and you can… think about it,” he says, and that’s that.

***

Magnus gets home just before noon, but instead of getting out and heading into his warm loft he sits in his slowly cooling car for a moment to just… think. 

Because here’s the thing. Magnus has been hurt in the past. He’s had his heart broken irreparably. He’s done the best he can to fix it back up again, but there’s only so much a heart can take. He just… he’s not sure he’s ready. He’s not sure he can handle this. This… falling in love with someone who is slowly dying.

So he could back out now. No fuss, no muss. Alec was very clear in the fact that they didn’t have to go forward with this, even as casual as it is now. He wouldn’t fault Magnus for pulling out.

Magnus sighs. Then, knowing he’s going to regret his curiosity, he pulls out his phone and googles cystic fibrosis.

It’s not pretty. Respiratory issues and gastrointestinal issues and blood clotting issues… god. There’s so much to sift through. Ten minutes later he’s halfway through the wikipedia article and he just… he can’t anymore. He goes inside with a heavy heart and finds himself falling into bed without even bothering to change out of his clothes from yesterday. 

He doesn’t mean to stay there, but gravity is weighing on all his limbs and he can’t help it when his eyelids start to droop. Sleep takes him before he can do more than send a quick text to the group chat.

***

Magnus has only been to London once. 

It was a summer trip, a fun little jaunt that was funded by the high school’s theater club. They were working on a steampunk production of Shakespeare’s play _Much Ado About Nothing_ , and the club organizer decided that in order to use the left-over budget from the year before it got taken away for some dumb administrative reason, they would go to Shakespeare’s hometown and travel around England to get a feel for the country. 

This wouldn’t have mattered to Magnus, who was too young for high school at the time, if it weren’t for the fact that the high school was also doing an outreach program for youth from low-income households. Magnus, all of eleven, was one of the lucky middle schoolers who was selected to accompany the older kids across the ocean.

This isn’t important. What’s important is that it was on this trip that Magnus first met Will—Will, who wore a Victorian vest, coat, and hat the entire trip, to, as he said, ‘get in character’. 

Will, who Magnus found himself enamored with from day one despite the fact that he was three years older and already dating Tessa. 

Will, whose blue eyes and black hair and charming smile would never, _could_ never, be fully wiped from Magnus’s memory, even after the car crash that took his life two years later.

Will, who even now comes to Magnus in his dreams, always in London, always on a day when the sun is piercing through the mist, always in his green costume vest and the black Victorian jacket, forever sixteen, face as youthful as he was the day he died. 

He has his head tilted to the side as he watches Magnus pick his way across the cobblestones. “It’s been a while,” he says, once Magnus has reached him, flipping his hat in the air and catching it with a smirk.

***

Magnus sits side by side with his old friend, leaning his chin on his hand. “I met someone,” he says, after he’s done telling Will all about how Tessa and Jem are doing now. They’ve finally chosen a date for their wedding, which they’ve been planning for three years. 

Will never seems surprised by the news, as if he already knows everything Magnus has to tell him about the people he loved most dearly in life. Still, Magnus makes sure to tell him, all the same. It doesn’t matter if Will is just a figment of his imagination, Will deserves to know.

“Yup, that you did,” Will says. He’s stretched his feet out before him, his sneakers a stark contrast to the costume he’s wearing, looking up through the mist toward the sky. He never did like the costume shoes. 

“He’s sick,” Magnus continues, ignoring Will’s flippant tone. “Average life expectancy for someone with his disease is between forty-two and fifty years old. I know—I looked it up.”

“Did you also look up ‘pusillanimity’?”

“Excuse me?”

Will turns, his blue eyes blazing. He used to seem so old to Magnus, but now Magnus can see him for how young he really was. Magnus has grown past him, lived on beyond him, now seven years the senior to a boy who never made it to seventeen.

A boy who now looks Magnus up and down, a smirk quirking up the corner of his lips. “Look it up when you get a chance.”

“And this has what to do with Alec?” Magnus asks, unamused.

“You’ll figure it out.” Will stands suddenly, his energetic nature getting the better of him as he pulls a plastic rapier prop from thin air and begins to swing it around, slashing through the mist. “In any case, look at it this way,” he says, dancing forward and and then back again, graceful as ever. “If you had known I was to die, would you have wanted less of my beautiful face in your life?”

“I wouldn’t have wanted the pain and grief that came with your death,” Magnus says, swirling a hand through the mist around them. When he draws it back his fingers are coated in shimmering white glitter, fine as dust.

“But that’s not what I’m asking, now is it?” Will says, his point made all the sharper by the tip of the sword that he swings suddenly under Magnus’s chin. It’s all in jest, playful, but there’s something deeper in Will’s waiting eyes.

“I don’t know,” Magnus says, frowning. He curls over himself, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Will sniffs. “Simple. I want you to—”

***

“—wake up, Magnus!”

Magnus jerks, his eyes closing on white mist and opening to his bedroom, the same as it ever is. He’s on his stomach, lying diagonally across his bed, and there’s someone tapping insistently at the arm he has thrown over his face.

“Wha…?” he asks, rolling over. He comes face to face with all of his friends, Tessa and Ragnor and Catarina and Jem and Raphael and—

“Where’s Will?” he says out loud.

Raphael’s lips thin out in a tense line. Tessa and Catarina exchange a look. 

“I think you were dreaming,” Jem says kindly from Tessa’s side, after a moment of silence.

Right. Right, he was dreaming. God. Yes. Okay. 

…Magnus scrubs at his face. “Why are you here?” he asks.

“We were worried,” Catarina says gently. 

Magnus blinks.

Ragnor, in turn, huffs a sigh. “Do try not to fall asleep just after sending concerning messages to the group chat,” he says.

Magnus sniffs, fumbling for his phone. He opens it to the group chat, reading up until he reaches his own name.

The last message he sent was a simple _do you ever think about dying?_ which was then followed by a good forty-six messages from his friends, asking for clarification and getting more and more urgent when he didn’t respond.

Whoops.

 _To love someone is to understand that they, too, are human_ , says a voice from somewhere deep inside him, as he raises his head to look around at his friends. 

Whatever they see in his face must be as equally worrying as the message, because they all soften, even Raphael. “Come on,” he says gruffly, drawing Magnus from his bed.

***

After an impromptu pizza party, Magnus sits up with Chairman Meow, too wired from his dream about Will to get any real sleep. The others—save for Catarina, who has an early shift tomorrow—are spread out in the living room, all tangled up in each other in sleep.

Pusillanimity… he did look it up, thank you very much. It means cowardice, basically. Will’s way of calling him a coward for hesitating, he suspects.

Because Will was right. Magnus knows it by the light of the moon shining in through his window, by the ache in his head, by the fierce, indignant anger that has settled in his chest. He wouldn’t have wanted less of Will and his absolutely ludicrous vocabulary if he knew Will was going to die. It wouldn’t have mattered if an angel had come down from the heavens to tell him that Will’s sister, Cecily, would be walking the stage at graduation to collect Will’s honorary diploma on the date that Will would have graduated, because even if he had seen the future, the funeral, the black suits and the casket… even if he had somehow _miraculously known_ how _little time was left_ , he still would have wanted everything there was to have.

Sitting in the dark, stroking Chairman’s back and watching the moon arc across the sky, Magnus watches as Will’s black hair becomes Alec’s black hair, and his blue eyes become Alec’s blue eyes. They’re not the same, not at all, but there’s something poignant about the comparison. Two boys, two young men… two fates interwoven, if only in the mind of one lonely vlogger sitting up late at night. 

Magnus breathes out, his hand coming to a rest on Chairman’s head. He hardly knows Alec, but he definitely knows his smile. He knows his laugh. He knows the face he wears when he’s thinking hard about what to order in a restaurant. He knows what sound he makes when Magnus mouths at his stomach. Magnus thinks of these things he knows… and good _god_ does he want more. He wants to know how Alec wakes in the morning, what he eats for breakfast, when he does his laundry, if he washes everything all at once or separates it out into colors. 

“…I’m in so deep,” he says, speaking into the night. He can almost hear Will’s laugh, somewhere in the distance, as if amused at the fact that he’s only now realizing this.

***

He asks to see Alec again the next chance he gets, which doesn’t come around until the weekend. He’s behind on vlogs and Ragnor is up his ass about it, which is really not conducive to having heartfelt discussions like this.

He manages to wriggle free from Ragnor’s grasp on Saturday, thankfully. It’s with a promise that he has something special planned for a video, assuming that everything goes well. Ragnor, who is a lot sharper than many people give him credit for, sees it for what it is but, for once in his stubborn life, relents and allows Magnus a day off.

Which is how Magnus finds himself back at the Lightwood brothers’ apartment, sitting awkwardly on a scuffed-up armchair that the brothers probably bought from a garage sale somewhere, as Alec sits on the couch across from him. There is a veritable chasm between them, which is not doing much to help Magnus’s sudden nerves.

Alec speaks before Magnus gets up the courage, his voice still cold, still stilted, as if he’s encased himself in ice. “You didn’t have to come all this way.”

Magnus shakes his head. “I did,” he says. He cracks a small, nervous smile. “I owed you that much, at least.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Alec says. “You didn’t commit to this whole… thing. You didn’t ask for it.” 

Magnus sits up straighter, matching Alec’s straight-backed posture. His heart is beginning to pound in his chest as he thinks about Will and his friends and Alec, Alec, _Alec_. “Yeah,” he says, and licks his chapped lips. He was so nervous he forgot his lip gloss this morning. “You’re right about that. I didn’t ask for this… but you didn’t either, and I still want a say in our relationship.”

Face wary, Alec gestures for him to continue.

Magnus does, pushing though the last of his hesitation. “I thought about it. I thought pretty hard about it, actually. But I came to a decision, and… if there’s a shot that we could be happy for a short time together rather than miserable for a long time apart, I’ll take it.”

It takes a moment as Alec processes this, his face turning down. Then, all at once, his eyes are flicking up toward Magnus’s and there is a _fire_ burning in them. He meets Magnus’s gaze and it’s as if he’s staring through Magnus from front to back, as if he’s looking for any sign that Magnus might not really mean it.

Magnus doesn’t know much, but he does know that Alec isn’t going to find one.

“I want to try,” Magnus says, standing up and reaching across the chasm between them for Alec’s hands. They’re cold in his, and he wraps his long fingers around Alec’s to warm him. “I want to try and have something real. Something _genuine_. And if it ends then it ends, but it’s not going to end because I’m scared.”

Alec looks up at him, the soldier’s mask slipping away. The ice he’s shrouded himself in is melting, the breath leaving him in a whoosh as his shoulders slump. “Oh thank god,” he says, and leans forward to press his forehead against Magnus’s stomach.

***

They talk for a while after that, after migrating from the living room to Alec’s bed. About what Alec’s life is going to look like, the different possibilities and outcomes. It’s complicated, and even Alec himself doesn’t know for sure what’s in store for him, but talking it out helps and Magnus feels more centered in the knowledge that Alec has gotten this far with so few major complications. 

By the end of it all, Magnus is propped up against Alec’s pillows with his knees drawn up. Alec surprised him, when they first settled down, by curling up around him like a comma, one arm thrown over his stomach and holding on tight. It’s a stark contrast to how he’s behaved up until this point, always keeping a bit of physical and emotional distance when they weren’t having sex. The younger man has never seemed quite comfortable cuddling close, despite their otherwise physical relationship. Now, however…

Magnus sighs, threading his fingers through Alec’s hair. He doesn’t know what exactly has changed for them, if this is a result of their new relationship or of talking things out or of something else altogether, but he’s silently grateful that he’s not the only one who wants to hold on tight.


	5. 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added some important new tags, so if you’re sensitive to anything you might want to check them out before reading the chapter.

*4.*

The fourth clip is polished to a shine, all professional lighting and twin tuxedos, one in black and one in white.

Magnus, easily recognizable by the gold glitter dusting his cheeks and the shoulders of his white tux, stands side by side with Alec, who is dressed in black. They are a pair of comedy and tragedy masks, Magnus’s wide smile offset by Alec’s stoic stare. 

“Hello again, everyone,” Magnus says. He pauses there for a moment, before nudging Alec in the side with an elbow. 

Alec sighs. “Hi,” he says, sounding less than enthusiastic to be on camera. 

Magnus ignores this in favor of bouncing on the balls of his feet, glancing over at Alec, who gives him a quick nod back. “So, as you guys know, we’ve been planning something for a while now. We’ve been keeping it cryptic on the channel because we wanted to make this video a surprise. So, surprise!”

In synchrony, the two of them raise their hands, bringing a white banner with the words ‘ _just married_ ’ painted in gold across the front up for the camera. 

“We’ve tied the knot!” Magnus says, his happy smile only growing. Someone off-screen whoops loudly, and Magnus laughs. Then he slings an arm around Alec’s shoulders, letting the banner fall again. “Everyone, I’d like you to meet Alexander, my husband! Smile for the camera, babe!”

“No.”

“But its—it’s our wedding, babe, you have to smile.”

Alec shrugs. “I smiled on the official footage. I’m not smiling for your vlog.”

“My vlog _is_ official footage! You—fine. I’m picking my battles.” Magnus rolls his eyes dramatically. Then he leans forward toward the camera, dragging Alec with him. He cups a hand around his mouth and stage-whispers, “It’s hard to tell because he’s being grumpy and has a _frowny face_ on, but my _husband_ is _very_ handsome right now. We got these tuxes fitted and he is _fine as hell_. I asked Catarina to get some footage of his ass so I could show you guys but honestly I’m thinking I might just keep it for myself.”

“ _Magnus_ ,” comes a warning.

“Oh, did you want to share it?” Magnus asks, turning innocently to his husband.

“I—what—no!”

“Yeah, you’re right. I think it’s best if we don’t advertise how cute your ass is, or else we’ll have people clamoring all over you. I don’t want to fight anybody. I mean, I will if I have to, but—”

“Really?” Alec sighs, turning his frown on Magnus.

Magnus laughs. “I’m sorry. How about a kiss to make up for my bad behavior?”

Alec turns forward, staring off into the distance with another sigh on his lips. “You see what I have to deal with?” he asks the camera. 

Magnus, busy making smooching noises in his general direction, doesn’t so much as pause in his assault.

Alec plants a hand on his face, holding him back. “God, just—stop embarrassing me, please.”

Magnus snickers, pulling back just slightly. “You’re going to have to get used to that, darling. In sickness and in health, through embarrassment and PDA.”

“I didn’t ask you to marry me just to get treated like this.”

“No. You asked me to marry you because you love me,” Magnus says. He’s still bouncing, lifting himself up on the balls of his feet as if he’s ready to fly away. He can hardly contain his energy, he’s so happy, and when Alec grumbles a ‘guess so’ he actually breaks out into a little victory dance, leaning into Alec’s side.

“I love you so much, you know that?” he asks, leaning his head against Alec’s shoulder.

Still keeping a straight face, Alec ducks his head, nudging his nose under Magnus’s temple and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

Magnus’s eyes go wide. “Whu—you can’t just do that!” he says.

Alec quirks a brow at him, lifting the banner once more to point at the words on it. “You’ll find that I can. See this? It says we’re married. You’re mine now, for as long as I live.”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Magnus says with a smile, leaning in to catch his lips.

***

The day they talk, Magnus spends the night for a second time in Alec’s apartment, this time with Alec in his bed beside him. He’s woken up a few times in the night by coughing, and grumbles awake in the morning when Alec gets up for his morning medicine, but the chaste kiss he gets afterward makes it more than worth it.

And so the story goes on. Alec starts spending the night, Magnus introduces Alec on his youtube channel, and the two of them begin to come together, lives overlapping as they explore mortality and chronic illness side by side through Magnus’s vlogs. Documenting good days, documenting bad days, documenting dumb jokes and pranks and sweet moments. Just living life, walking their paths side by side, all while gathering gigabytes of video.

It’s good, settling into a new normal, but they can’t get complacent just yet. There’s still one more test they need to pass— _meeting the family_.

***

“Are you sure you want to do it today? We could put it off a day or two.”

Alec, flat on his back in Jace’s bed and out of breath from coughing, quirks an eyebrow up at Magnus. He’s just finished with physical therapy with Jace—a rather worrying activity when you see it for the first time, since it involves Jace giving Alec what looks like a light beating to loosen the mucus in his chest—and he’s having a hard time catching his breath, which Magnus has learned is a signal that he’s having a bad day.

Not that he’s going to admit it. “Uh, no?” he says, pushing Jace away to sit up. The movement must dislodge something because he starts coughing again, pawing for the bowl beside him.

Magnus turns a beseeching eye on Jace, who only shrugs. “I don’t see why you two shouldn’t go,” he says. 

Hm. Magnus bites his bottom lip. He’s toeing a line, he knows he is—Alec is an independent person despite the illness, and on one hand it wouldn’t be kind to treat him with kid gloves. But on the other, if he wants Alec to stay in his life then today needs to go _well_ , and it’s not going to go _well_ if Alec passes out in the middle of lunch.

“Hey. If it’s bad enough to go home early, I’ll tell you,” Alec says, once he’s finished coughing up the gunk from his lungs. He stands, steady despite the shortness of his breath, and takes Magnus by the shoulders, looking at him very seriously. “I’m not going to stop my life short every time things get a little hard. That’s not what Lightwoods do.”

“Right. Right. I’m just… nervous,” Magnus says, closing his eyes. He hears Jace slip out of the room, closing the door behind him, and takes a deep, fortifying breath before looking back at Alec.

Alec, who has his lips quirked up in a smile, casual as can be. “Come on. Yours can’t be worse than mine,” he says, pressing his lips to Magnus’s forehead.

Magnus hasn’t yet met any Lightwoods other than Alec, Izzy, and Jace, but he still somehow doubts that.

***

The first time Magnus was acquainted with Death, he was five years old and his mother had just hung herself in the barn of their home in Indonesia. Magnus was the one who found her, the first to discover what she’d done.

Not the most pleasant thing to encounter, all things told.

He learned, later, that she’d been sick. Not physically, but mentally. Tormented by thoughts that Magnus, her only child, had been born of a demon who preyed on her. She took her own life believing that.

It turned out, in a sense, that she was right.

The demon, CEO of the American company Crown Prince Industries, had gone to Indonesia on a vacation with his mistress of the moment. He’d taken a liking to Magnus’s mother when they took a day trip out into the rural areas and, like any self-respecting American CEO would do, he offered her a sum of money for a trip to a hotel. 

He didn’t take no for an answer.

So, nine months later Magnus was born. And, five years after that, his mother died at her own hand. 

…Of course, that couldn’t be the end of it.

The second time Magnus was acquainted with Death, he was staying with his step-father, a man who had done backbreaking work in the fields all his life and who had stumbled backwards into marriage with a woman who had soon become the light of his life. He lost everything worth living for the day Magnus’s mother died, and he made sure Magnus knew that.

It was his hands, clumsy and drunk, that pushed Magnus’s head under the water of the river that ran through the town. It was his eyes, wide and unseeing, that stared while Magnus coughed up silty river water on the sandy bank.

So Magnus was orphaned. Seven years old, and no family to go to. 

Except. God, that _one damn exception_.

After a twenty hour flight to America, Magnus found himself in a Los Angeles mansion, displaced and alone. His biological father, who he had secretly come to think of as Asmodeus, the demon prince of lust— _and wasn_ _’t that fitting_ —brought him into the foyer to ask him questions.

He answered honestly, though he could see with each successive answer that this was a test and he was failing. He didn’t know much math, hadn’t taken much science, had no aptitude for engineering. He liked dance, and theater, and taking care of animals. He just… wasn’t good enough to be groomed as successor to the CPI fortune. 

…He wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse. Still isn’t, some days.

So he was shunted off, sent away from his biological father’s mansion. At eight, he found his way to foster care. At nine, he moved to New York with the family he was currently placed with. At ten, he said _no more_ , and was placed at a group home. And at eleven… at eleven he met Will. And through Will he met Tessa, and Jem, and Ragnor and Raphael and Catarina. He met the friends who eventually became his family. His true family. And though this family was rocked when Death came once more, for Will and nearly for Jem, it has survived by digging in its tenacious fingernails and setting down its stubborn roots, protective to the end.

***

He tells the story to Alec on the way to the bookstore coffee shop they’ll be meeting Magnus’s friends at. From a little mountain village in Indonesia to a mansion in Los Angeles to foster care in New York City he goes, each phase of his childhood strung along like beads on a necklace. Alec is attentive, only looking away every so often to cough into his elbow.

“Will’s death brought us closer together,” Magnus says, taking Alec’s hand on the way up the parking lot to the bookstore. “And it was with their support that I got through Camille. There were other things that happened, too, of course, but those are stories for the others to tell.”

Alec nods, squeezing Magnus’s fingers with a small smile. He hardly seems nervous at all, really—not until Magnus catches a glance at their reflection in the front window.

Alec’s back is ramrod straight, military posture.

Magnus purses his lips, pulling his boyfriend closer to his side as they step into the building. He’s come to hate that posture, the way that Alec stands as if at attention when he’s unsure or nervous or scared. He’s not sure who taught Alec to do that, but if all goes well today he’s going to meet them, and hopefully he can give them a piece of his mind.

At least he can turn and give Alec a reassuring kiss on the cheek before the shovel talks start.

Which, of course, earns him a wolf whistle from across the room. Catarina, an innocent look on her face, smiles when he whips his head around to glare at her. She and Ragnor are stationed at the cafe already, at two tables that have been pushed together.

“You’re late,” Ragnor says, indicating his watch.

“Yes, but fashionably so. Raphael and the lovebirds aren’t even here yet. Besides, I think we get a pass, we had a bit of a rough morning,” Magnus says. He sees Alec tense in his peripheral vision, but neither Catarina or Ragnor comments other than Catarina’s polite, “Everything alright?” after which Alec nods and she subsides, gesturing for him to sit beside her.

“Raphael was pulled into business,” Ragnor says, once the two of them have settled. “Though undoubtedly he’d have been here already if given the chance, unlike some people.”

“You aren’t going to let that go, are you?” Magnus asks. “God, I was late getting footage to you _one time_ and you’ve never forgiven me for it.”

“Once? Try regularly,” Ragnor says, but Magnus waves him away. They’re here for Alec, after all.

Alec, who is again coughing into his sleeve.

Magnus rests a hand on his back, trying not to draw too much attention as he rubs up and down his spine. “Water or tea?” he asks, once Alec is quiet again.

Alec frowns, his eyes meeting Magnus’s in a challenge. “It’s my turn to pay,” he says. Magnus frowns at him, but after a quick eye-contact-only conversation he realizes that he’s not going to win this fight. He sighs, sitting back and gesturing for Alec to go ahead. 

“You know what I like,” he says, as Alec stands. Then he turns, finding both Ragnor and Catarina staring at him.

“And that was… what exactly?” Catarina asks.

Magnus groans, scrubbing his hands down his cheeks, careful of his eyeliner. “He’s just stubborn, is all,” he mumbles. He’s already told his friends about Alec’s diagnosis, with Alec’s blessing. Catarina, as a nurse, was already a little familiar with cystic fibrosis. 

She has a look of understanding about her now. “Is it a bad day?” she asks, and Magnus nods. “Well, he seems to be handling himself. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

“But what if there is?” Magnus says, lowering his voice despite the fact that Alec is out of earshot. “What if he’s pushing too hard because he wants to get this over with?”

“Get it over with?” Ragnor scoffs.

Magnus waves a hand. “You know what I mean! What if he’s not giving himself the rest he needs, what if—”

“You’re assuming an awful lot of things,” Catarina says, her brows pinching. “I know you’re nervous about today, but—”

“Hello, hello, sorry we’re late!” a breathless voice calls from across the room, Tessa and Jem appearing from the entrance. It looks like they ran, their hair mussed and breath quick, though they’re laughing as they make their way over.

Magnus shuts his mouth, feeling an odd tightness in his chest. Unbidden, a thought comes—can he and Alec ever look like that? Windswept and out of breath and happy? Or would Alec start coughing and Magnus start worrying and they would both watch it all spiral down, down, down?

He snaps out of it when Alec places a mug in front of him. “Mocha,” he says, taking his seat again. He has a cup of coffee for himself, as well, which Magnus frowns at.

“Sorry it took us so long, we had a lot of orders today,” Tessa says, taking a seat and distracting him. 

“She works at a book warehouse on the edge of the city called the Silent Labyrinth,” Magnus says, before Alec can ask. “It’s not a bookstore because everything is mail order and they don’t let customers in, which is baffling, if you ask me.”

“Hey, it works for me,” Tessa says, shrugging. Jem has taken a seat beside her, nodding to Magnus. He then turns his attention to Alec—

—who is sitting forward, his mouth open in an O.

“Are you okay?” Magnus asks, before he can help himself.

Alec ignores him, instead reaching for Jem’s hand. “Wow, hi. I didn’t think I’d be seeing you here. When Magnus said ‘Jem’ I didn’t think he meant, well, _you_.”

“Yes, I’m me,” Jem says with a laugh. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You two know each other?” Magnus asks as they shake hands enthusiastically, a step behind.

“Yeah,” Alec says. “We met, um… god, sorry, I’m so bad with dates.”

“It would have been about ten and a half years ago,” Jem says, giving Alec a gentle smile.

Magnus’s eyes flick between them for a moment, not understanding the significance of the date until he counts backward in his head.

Just over ten years ago, in September, Will died. Jem would have been in the hospital doing chemo for his cancer, which would mean…

“You were in the hospital?!” Magnus blurts.

The regret is immediate. If he could sew his mouth shut, he gladly would, as conversations around the table screech to a halt. 

Alec waves a hand, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah. It was a lung infection. It happens,” he says, and clears his throat, giving Magnus a look that clearly dares him to say something else about it.

Magnus does not dare. He instead takes an enormous slurp of his mocha, waving for someone else to speak.

No one does. Not until Jem says, kindly, “Well, it’s good to see you, still.”

Alec nods. “Yeah. You, too.”

…The awkward is palpable.

***

Eventually the conversation starts moving again, Magnus’s faux pas brushed away under the rug. Against all odds, Raphael shows up about halfway through a light lunch, huffing himself down into a seat and covering his bloodshot eyes with a hand.

“You should be sleeping,” Ragnor says, taking a bite of his salad.

“You should mind your business,” Raphael says back, without missing a beat.

Magnus clears his throat. “Raphael, Alec. Alec, Ra—”

“No first names,” Raphael says, cutting him off. He opens one eye to glare. “You’re a Lightwood and you’re staying a Lightwood until I’m good and satisfied.”

Alec, to his credit, doesn’t even blink. “Sounds good to me, Santiago,” he says, glancing at the name badge pinned to Raphael’s chest. 

Magnus rolls his eyes, turning to Alec. “Sorry about him. Raphael is a night owl—he works night shifts at the Hotel Dumont. He’s not used to being up and about at this time of the day.”

“Ah, but lucky for me they called an emergency staff meeting today,” Raphael says, and rolls his eyes back. “Bloodsuckers…” he mutters.

“I’ve heard you’re in college,” Tessa says, cutting across him as she leans toward Alec. “What classes are you taking?”

“He’s majoring in social work,” Magnus says proudly, accidentally cutting Alec off. Alec gives him an unreadable look, but Magnus gets the hint from the seriousness in his eyes— _don_ _’t speak over me_ , he’s saying. Magnus clears his throat, gesturing for Alec to continue.

“Major in social work, like Magnus said, with a minor in theology,” Alec says. “And a few extracurriculars. I’m head of the archery club.”

“Archery, huh,” Catarina says, raising her eyebrows. She turns a _look_ on Magnus. 

“Yes, it is exactly as sexy as you might imagine,” Magnus intones, very seriously. Alec goes brick red, hissing at him to shut up, but Magnus is long gone, lost to the thought of Alec and a bow and arrow. Nocking the arrow on the bowstring, raising it slowly to eye level and pulling the arrow back and back and back… so much strength, so much dexterity, the precision of a hunter’s eye gazing down the length of an arrow at a target… god, it gives him goosebumps.

“Magnus,” says a disproving voice, snapping him from his thoughts. He smiles unrepentantly at Ragnor, reaching for the phone that Ragnor is holding out to him.

“Oh!” he says, getting a look at the screen. “Alexander, remember that vlog I showed you the other day?”

“You show me vlogs all the time,” Alec says, sipping at his coffee. Tessa snorts.

Magnus glares. “Yes. I mean the one about the oranges. It hit a hundred thousand views, so Ragnor did a response for me. Here, scoot closer.”

“A response?” Alec asks, but he’s leaning over, his shoulder resting against Magnus’s. 

Magnus hums, fiddling with the video settings. “Like a response video to my video. He responds to every video of mine that goes viral,” he says, setting the phone up against the napkin holder. “It’s funny as hell, watch this.”

The video starts with Ragnor, dressed in a green suit jacket and green tie, holding up both hands to his mouth in a folded prayer gesture. “ _It has come to my attention_ ,” he says, slow and serious, “ _that Magnus, the Bane of my existence, has posted another monstrosity. Worse yet, it_ _’s gone viral. I am here today to tear it apart._ ”

Magnus snorts at the intro. The video goes on, Ragnor picking apart Magnus’s entire video line by line, pointing out inconsistencies in the logic and jumps in subject and even oddities in the editing, an inside joke between the two of them since, as everyone here knows, Ragnor is his editor. Magnus laughs openly throughout, saying, “nice one!” to a particularly sharp burn. Ragnor inclines his head, accepting the praise. At the end, Alec is grinning as well, but there’s a question in his eyes. 

Magnus raises an eyebrow.

“That _was_ funny, I’m just confused,” Alec says, turning toward Ragnor. “Why do you…?”

“It’s to put him in his place. So he doesn’t get an inflated head about things,” Ragnor says, very serious, as Magnus rolls his eyes. Ragnor is very good at pretending that he’s an old grump with a six-thousand-year-old soul who likes no one, but Magnus knows the truth, which is that he thinks of Magnus almost as a younger brother—the kind of person who annoys the shit out of him day to day but for whom he would gladly give his life.

It’s the same thing that Ragnor feels for any of them, and any of them for Ragnor, and any of them for anyone else. And, in silence and memory, for the space where Will used to be, the gap in their circle that will never quite be filled.

Magnus watches as Catarina starts telling stories from Ragnor’s early attempts at vlogging, and Alec laughs along, coughing every so often. He’s not one of them, not yet, but Magnus can tell by the ease of his posture that he’s comfortable, at least. And it’s no wonder—looking around at the rest of his friends, his family, Magnus can see that there isn’t a single person here who is up in arms about Alec. 

Alec, against all odds, has been accepted. 

***

They get home late in the afternoon. Dinner comes early, Jace and Alec sharing the duties of cooking. They move gracefully together, dancing around each other as they reach for utensils and shift stove dials. It’s beautiful, in an aching way. How long will Alec be able to do this, how long before his lungs—?

Magnus grits his teeth, pushing the thought from his mind. It’s useless to think like that, he knows it is. He should just—enjoy the now, right here in this space where Jace raises a hot pan and Alec ducks neatly under it. Alec is okay. He’s okay.

Unless he’s not. Magnus watches closely later that night, standing side by side with Alec as they brush their teeth together. Alec looks… flushed. Like he’s developing a fever. Like he’s pushed too hard and he’s paying for it now.

Magnus spits out his toothpaste, and reaches out a hand to touch Alec’s forehead.

He’s stopped by the hand that grabs his wrist.

“Stop. Just stop,” Alec says, a frown turning down his lips. “You’re driving me nuts, Magnus, you’ve been driving me nuts _all day_ and I just—why don’t you trust that I know my own health?”

Magnus wilts in his pajamas, his hand going limp in Alec’s grip. “I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to this. It’s like… I know, intellectually, that you’ve lived with this your whole life. But it’s all new to me, and I have to adjust a bit still.” He leans into Alec’s side, nuzzling his face into the crook of Alec’s neck. “Forgive me?”

Alec’s tense body relaxes slightly, and he lets go of Magnus’s hand to wrap an arm around Magnus’s shoulders.

“It’s nice,” he says, after a moment of silence, “that you want to protect me. But I don’t need you to protect me, Magnus. I just need you to be _you_.”

Magnus nods, and the rest of the tension leaks out of Alec. For a moment they stand, together, and for the first time all day Magnus’s heart doesn’t feel like it’s beating out of his chest. He feels calm, and collected, and settled in his skin.

His family likes Alec. His family _likes Alec_. The only thing left now is getting Alec’s family’s approval. 

How hard can that be?

***

“What exactly are your intentions toward our son?”

The words come in slow motion, dripping past the lips of the man seated across from Magnus. He’s of an average height, balding, with a short military haircut, but his voice has the reverberation of command in it, compelling Magnus to answer _or else_. 

Magnus, sweating through his shirt, swallows heavily. You know that feeling, the one you get when you speak too soon and you immediately regret it? 

Well. Remember when Magnus thought the words ‘ _how hard can that be_ ’?

God. He should have taken Alec’s warnings seriously, because his in a verified _pickle_.

“No intentions! I don’t have intentions toward your son!” Magnus says, too fast and too jerky, like a flightless bird crashing through a window. He winces inwardly. 

“So you don’t intend to marry him? What’s the point of a relationship, if you don’t intend to marry?” the stern woman who has been introduced as Alec’s mother asks. There’s a wolfish gleam in her eye, something that glints like the edge of a scalpel. 

It’s a challenge. If Magnus doesn’t find the right words in the next two point five seconds, he knows he’s boned.

He waves a hand loosely, hyper aware of the fact that he’s the only person at the table who uses his hands to speak. Alec is rigid at his side—he’s been making silent eye contact with his mother all evening, as if pleading silently with her to lay off. 

She hasn’t.

Whoops, times up. Magnus’s open mouth and whatever he plans to say using it gets interrupted by Alec’s father, who leans back in his chair, a look of disgust on his face.

“Alec,” he says, “I know we haven’t exactly seen eye to eye in the past, but is this really necessary? What are you doing, bringing him here?”

Alec grits his teeth. His sister, Izzy, is shaking her head silently from their father’s other side, but Alec has his game-face on and Magnus knows he’s not going to back down.

Which is why Magnus raises his hand and steps between the proverbial bull and its toreador. 

“I’d very much rather you didn’t speak about me as if I’m not right in front of you,” he says first. Then he takes a deep breath, glancing at Alec before he thinks, fuck it, and stands, planting his hand on one cocked hip. If he’s going to be awkward and flamboyant and stick out like a sore thumb, by _god_ is he going to do it all the way.

“I have no intentions with your son, because he is not a toy for me to play with and then discard. He is his own person, and every decision we are to make will be one hundred percent mutual. If you have a problem with that, or with me, you can bring it up directly _with_ me, as I am, incredibly enough, standing _right in front of you_.”

For a moment there’s nothing but silence, mouths agape and forks suspended. Then a slow clap begins, Jace rising to his feet as well as he brings his hands together.

“Jace,” Maryse Lightwood hisses, casting her glare at him. “Stop that.”

“Sorry, mom. I thought it was worth an ovation,” Jace says innocently. He looks at Izzy, whose smile is threatening to overtake her, and offers her a hand up. She shoots to her feet as well, adding a second set of clapping hands as the two siblings stare down their parents.

Parents who are clearly furious. Magnus winces inwardly. He… could probably have handled that better. But Alec isn’t clenching his jaw anymore, and his back isn’t so rigid, and by god he deserves a show of support every once in a while. So what if it comes at the cost of Magnus never being allowed back to his parents house, on pain of death?

“Okay, okay,” Alec says a moment later, but he’s still smiling even as he tugs at Magnus’s sleeve. “Everybody sit down, finish your food.”

Magnus flumps into his seat, picking his fork back up. “This sausage is delicious, by the way,” he says, and winks an eye at Alec.

Alec lets out an exasperated sigh, but he still unfolds a hand under the table, brushing his knuckles against Magnus’s thigh.

***

“Sorry, they’re… a lot.”

Magnus waves the words away, more interested in examining the contents of Alec’s old bedroom. “As long as I haven’t gotten you in too much trouble, I don’t really care,” he says, skating his ringed fingers over a series of archery trophies on the desk. He comes to a halt at a photograph—four kids, three of them in the eleven/twelve/thirteen range and one barely three. They all look alike, all of them except Jace, who with his golden hair stands out in this household almost as badly as Magnus does.

That’s not the part that Magnus focuses on, however, as he looks down at the photo. “Who is this?” he asks, touching the youngest child. He’s got thick glasses on, smiling a gap-toothed smile.

Alec follows his gaze, then swallows visibly. “Max,” he says, and the heartbreak in his voice says it all.

“You don’t need to tell me,” Magnus says, instantly reaching for Alec, but Alec shakes his head and starts talking about a little brother who used to sit on the edge of the pool while Alec swam laps to help strengthen his lungs. He knew not to get in—he hadn’t learned to swim yet, and it wasn’t safe.

But, as kids sometimes do, he got an idea in his head. He was going to teach himself to swim just like his siblings. He changed into his swimsuit late one night, when everyone else was asleep, and went out to the pool in the yard.

No one knows how it happened. If he jumped straight in to the deep end, no fear, with a sureness borne from watching his siblings. Maybe he crept in from the shallow end until the water was too deep, too high, pouring into his mouth too fast for him to scream. All they knew was that one moment he was here on this earth with them and the next he was with God, up in heaven.

By the end of the tale Magnus’s eyes are wet, and he silently curses Death for visiting Alec, too. 

“Mom and Dad took it hard,” Alec says into Magnus’s shoulder. His hand is absently stroking up and down Magnus’s back, as if it’s Magnus who needs to be comforted right now. “The church said it was God’s plan, same as they always said about my illness. But as I got older and I came out of the closet, the church changed their tune about it. They started saying my illness was a manifestation of my sin, and that my parents must have done something very wrong to have killed one son and created another that defies God’s will.”

“That’s fucked up,” Magnus croaks, squinting a glare at the wall.

Alec shushes him absently, still running a hand up and down, up and down, holding him tight. “I know. Trust me, I know.”

“So your parents… do they support you at all?” Magnus asks.

Alec shrugs a shoulder. “It’s hard for them. They’re ex-military, and with what the church says… it’s just… _hard_. Mom doesn’t care if I have ‘flings’ as long as I do my duty and settle down with a woman eventually, but Dad… I’m not actually sure if he’ll ever…”

 _Accept me at all_ goes unspoken, and Magnus clings harder to his boyfriend. “You know that you’re more than what your parents want you to be, right?” he asks.

Alec breathes out. “I think… it’s hard to separate what they taught me, their beliefs, from my own thoughts? I guess? They are so adamant that if they can steer their remaining children on a righteous path that our family will be spared more suffering. And I always wanted to believe that—I wanted to believe that if I prayed hard enough my lungs would get better and I would be healthy. But that isn’t how it works, so I just… I have to let them have their faith, and I get you.” 

He pulls back, leaving a sudden cold spot at Magnus’s front as he stares into Magnus’s eyes. Magnus opens his mouth, but for the second time tonight nothing quite comes out and he’s left with no words. Thankfully, this time Alec is there to fill the silence.

“I want you,” he says, his blue eyes burning with something sincere and desperate and strong. “I don’t want to hide parts of myself away anymore. I want to be with you, and I don’t want to let go.”

Magnus raises a hand, glacially slow, and sets it on Alec’s cheek. “As long as you’ll have me, I’ll be here,” he says. “If you think I’m letting go, then you have another thing coming.”

***

Spring rolls in, and with it outdoor archery practices. Magnus finds himself at more than a few of them, sitting up on the bleachers and recording his vlogs in the light of the sun, with the occasional scream of support thrown in. He even gets a few shots of Alec taking his turn at the target, and it is _exactly_ as marvelous as it always is in his head, if not more so. 

Soon enough he brings up an idea with Alec about intentionally recording some trick shots for the channel. And just like that, Alec’s vlogging career is off, taking a running start.

It’s only archery at first, because Alec doesn’t have to speak, he can just let loose and the arrows will speak for themselves. Soon enough, however, he’s started explaining what he’s doing to the camera, which morphs into archery how-to videos, which morphs into theory videos, which morphs into book vlogs and book haul videos and collaborations with Tessa wherein they argue for an hour straight about what the blue curtains that show up on page nineteen of a novel actually mean. 

It’s fun, watching Alec come out of his shell in front of the camera, even if he never quite laughs. Almost as fun as trying to steal Ragnor’s new bottle of cognac from the whiskey cabinet without Ragnor noticing. Magnus grins as Ragnor glares down at him. Attempt number five seems to be a bust.

It’s beautiful, a whirlwind of sound and motion and video reels. Spring turns to summer turns to fall turns to winter and they celebrate their first anniversary in a movie theater, sneaking kisses when the action on the screen gets intense. Magnus feels light, and happy, and like he’s settled all at once, resonating at a frequency sung by the universe itself.

And then, all at once, it gets even better.

***

It happens on a February morning, after a meet-up between Alec and Tessa. They’ve just finished their weekly dose of arguing and Tessa is packing up to leave. Magnus, who has just stuck his head in to see if he can send the footage to Ragnor yet, feels his heart melt at the sight of Alec, lounging in a computer chair and looking out the window, a distant expression on his face.

“Hey,” Magnus says, slipping into the room and sliding his palms down over Alec’s chest from behind. “Sounded like it went well today, huh? Did you get everything you need for the video?”

Alec hums, spinning in his chair so that he’s facing Magnus. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, dismissing Magnus’s question.

“A dangerous activity,” Magnus laughs, and Alec swats at him.

“Be quiet. I’ve just… I’ve been thinking a lot. About, um… our relationship?”

Magnus tenses, but Alec is already taking his hands, soothing him with little massaging strokes.

“I don’t mean it in an ominous way. Just like… this is going to sound bad, but I wished once on a star that I’d find someone to love before I died. I didn’t think it was a wish that would come true, because fuck, I wasn’t sure I’d live to see eighteen let alone long enough to make some kind of human connection with someone. But you… god, Magnus. You answered my call. In a way I wasn’t expecting at all. I wasn’t expecting to have a nice relationship or a fun fling or even a satisfying one night stand or anything, really, but you came in and you gave me everything I could have ever dreamed of and more, and—Magnus, I love you so much. With all my heart.”

And then, with Magnus’s hands held in his own, wearing a blue t-shirt and black sweats, his feet bare and his hair mussed, Alec slides from his chair and down onto one knee.

“I have a ring,” he says, “but I don’t want to let you go to go get it. So Magnus Bane… will you marry me?”

Magnus doesn’t know how wide he’s smiling, but it must be pretty damn wide because Alec’s smile in return is like the sun itself. “Yes,” Magnus says, through the lump in his throat. He coughs, clearing it out to say it louder. “Yes, Alexander— _god_ , yes.”

And then Alec is tugging Magnus down to the floor with him, and they’re hugging each other close, and though it’s barely been more than a year since they met Magnus has never been more solid, more sound, more _sure_ , not of _anything in his life_. 

***

Magnus sits, his long legs stretched before him, lounging in a pink love seat as if it’s a throne. He feels completely at ease, a thrum of energy coursing through him. He snaps his fingers and the thrum vibrates like a cello string, a series of blue lights curling from his fingertips.

He knows, in the way one does in dreams, that this is magic. Not just any magic, though—it’s _his_ magic, pulsing with his pulse and breathing with his breath, expanding and collapsing like a small galaxy inside him. He rolls his head to the side, taking in his loft and all the strange, magical artifacts that cover it like he’s done so a million times before. He turns his head straight on, and stares down immortality as if that, too, is familiar.

He opens his mouth, and a word comes to his tongue. “Alexander,” he sings, the syllables dancing. He is an immortal warlock, in this dream of his, and his Alec, his Alexander, is a shadowhunter, all strength and agility and angelic power.

Human. A strong human, but still mortal.

A human who, he realizes after half a beat, is no longer here. 

The feeling of loss explodes from a point that takes up no space, expanding into a universe that takes up all space in the span of half a second, and Magnus wakes in a cold sweat with the idea, the conviction, that he’s facing down eternity without Alexander, without the love of his life, alone alone _alone_.

It lasts but an instant, until the snore in his peripheral catches his attention. He rolls over, feeling Alec’s chest rise and fall under the sheets of their shared bed, and breathes out a shaky breath.

He knows the dream for what it is. His subconscious is trying to make sense of the fact that he’s going to outlive Alec. Despite the fact that Alec is younger, despite the fact that he’s so much stronger, despite the fact that he’s so, so vibrant.

Magnus breathes out, shuffling toward Alec until he’s pressed up against his back, his arm slotted over Alec’s waist. He’s alive, he’s living, he’s here. And it’s this alone that convinces Magnus that if there was ever a place to show Alec he’s wanted, it’s here. If there was ever a time to give Alec the love he deserves, it’s now. Before his time comes, before his life is cut short by the scissors in the hands of a Fate. They don’t have time to be hesitant—they already faltered once, at the beginning of their relationship, and he doesn’t plan to do it again.

Let the future come. Let marriage, and love, and even Death come. So long as he gets to have Alec by his side, once and for all, until the day it all comes crumbling down.


	6. 5.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Married life.

*5.*

The fifth clip is somber, taken in a dimly lit hospital room late at night.

There is a window, a bed, and a series of machines and monitors. The camera hangs back, focused on the doctor leaning over the figure propped up in the bed, the basin sitting just beside him. When the doctor leans back the figure becomes recognizable as Alec, though he’s clearly older—in his late thirties—and his jaw is lined with scruff. He has a mask that a nurse would recognize as one for a BiPAP machine hanging around his neck. At the moment he’s leaning over the basin, poised there.

“Do you think you’re going to throw up again?” Magnus’s voice asks after a moment of silence, coming from behind the camera.

Alec shakes his head. Pauses. Shrugs.

“Mask up,” the doctor says. He’s an older man, one with a stern, no-nonsense attitude. “Try to keep it on, understood?”

Alec nods. Still, he pauses for a moment before pulling the mask back into place and leaning back. He then raises his eyes to the camera, rolling them.

The doctor tuts, pulling back to face Magnus and the camera. “Your husband is a handful,” he says, his lips pursed.

“Yes, I’m well aware. How is he doing?” Magnus asks. The camera flits to the side, revealing two young men who are standing beside him—the younger, about twenty-three, has dark skin and short blue hair, dressed all in blue, while the elder, twenty-seven, has brown curls that spill over his pale forehead and a beaded necklace around his throat. They are waiting nervously for the answer.

The camera flits back to the doctor, who is scribbling in Alec’s chart. A nurse in blue scrubs slips into the room at his side, exchanging the basin on the bed for a clean one, and the doctor murmurs to her for a moment before turning back to Magnus.

His voice is brisk as he updates him.

“There’s no indication that the antibiotics are working yet. We’ll reassess in a few hours and if they’re still not doing anything we’ll try something stronger. His last blood work panel indicates that he’s not absorbing nutrients very well, though that might be in part due to the vomiting. We’re going to give him some IV fluids overnight through the catheter to stay ahead of dehydration, and if he still can’t keep anything down tomorrow we’ll start talking about a feeding tube. As for the rest of you…” 

The doctor levels a glare at the three of them. 

“Visiting hours are over,” he says, and one of the young men begins to protest. He holds up a hand. “But. I know you’ve had a difficult evening, so I’ll let it slide.”

“Thank you,” Magnus says, and the camera dips in a quick bow.

“You get an hour,” the doctor says, a warning as well as a threat, as he sets the chart back on the end of the bed. He reaches past the camera to give Magnus’s arm a squeeze on his way out.

Magnus wastes no time once he’s gone. He and the camera approach the bed with single-minded focus, coming to a stop level with Alec. One brown hand reaches forward, stroking Alec’s dark hair back from his face. It’s peppered with streaks of gray.

He looks tired, close up. Thin, sick. His eyes are bloodshot, half-lidded as he looks up at his husband and then past him to the kids. He seems focused for a moment, his brows pinching. Then he slowly raises his hands, signing in ASL with a series of motions.

<You two should go home> the captions say. <We’ll text if anything else happens>

The camera flicks over to one of the young men, the older one, who is signing back.

<I’m not leaving>

“Your father is tired, and it’s late,” Magnus says, before Alec can say anything else. The blue-haired boy translates as he goes, the captions mirroring the words. “Go, take Max home. We’ll text, promise.”

The older of the young men pauses, biting his lower lip. 

“Rafe,” Magnus says, his voice soft. 

With a loud sigh, the young man, Rafe, nods. He then comes forward to give Alec a hug, holding on for a long time before he backs away. He signs again, this time to Magnus, as the blue-haired man goes to hug Alec.

<I’m trusting you> the captions say. Rafe’s face is dark, serious. 

Magnus reaches forward, setting a hand on the young man’s shoulder, silent reassurance. Then he guides both the kids away and toward the door.

By the time he returns to Alec, Alec is wilting, sinking down into his pillows. His eyes are closed, and he’s clearly exhausted, but he opens them again when Magnus strokes a thumb across his forehead, the only part of his husband’s face that he can reach with the mask in the way.

Alec huffs. Then, his brows furrowed, he starts to tug insistently at Magnus’s elbow.

“Hold on, hold on,” Magnus says, and the camera is set down on a nearby table, propped up to keep them in view. It watches silently as Magnus takes a moment to rearrange all the tubes and wires connected to Alec, as he climbs into the bed beside his husband. “Sleepy?” he asks softly once he’s settled, pulling Alec close.

A nod, and Alec buries his masked face in Magnus’s shirt. He’s only there for a moment before he starts to cough again, pulling the mask away from his face. He curls up around the basin, miserable. Magnus soothes him, rubbing his back as he coughs so hard he throws up, and holds him close once the fit is over.

“I’m going to sing for five minutes, and if you’re not asleep by the time I’m done I get to throw out that abomination of an outfit that you wear to work parties,” Magnus says. 

Alec is quiet, his hands still, as he settles in against Magnus’s side, as if accepting the conditions with no protest. 

Magnus presses a kiss to the crown of his head. Then, slowly, his voice rising above the sounds of the hospital room, the humming machines and beeping oxygen monitor and everything else, Magnus begins to sing in Indonesian.

It’s a beautiful melody, soft but warm, like the light of a setting sun settling behind the mountains of a small Indonesian village. Alec’s eyes close, his head on Magnus’s shoulder.

It’s unclear if he sleeps. He might… or he might not… but either way Magnus continues singing, his voice drifting across the camera’s microphone long after five minutes are up.

***

Married life is, in a word, fantastic. 

Admittedly, it’s probably the honeymoon talking. At least at first. They go to Barbados for a week, during which they do nothing but drink cocktails, lounge about, and have inordinate amounts of hot, steamy sex. It’s so good that even Alec’s sunburn can’t put a damper on their joy.

Magnus is still feeling great even as they return to everyday life, and it’s here that he begins to wonder exactly why that feels so… odd. It takes him a while to figure out why exactly it is, and when it hits him, he has to take a moment to stand in the middle of their kitchen and breathe.

Because he heard Alec when he talked about how he thought he’d never find love. He’d sympathized with Alec’s words, his confession about making that wish on that star but still knowing deep down it was too much to ask for. And yet it isn’t until right here, right this moment, that Magnus realizes that he felt the _exact same way_. He had _no idea_ how much he, himself, had yearned for something like this. 

He gasps, leaning over the counter. His heart is so light, so pain free, whole and hale and healthy, and he hadn’t even noticed. He hadn’t noticed Alec slowly but surely filling in all the cracks that were left behind by Camille. He’d known, of course, that Alec was good for him… but he never noticed Alec taking down each and every one of Magnus’s defenses, leaving him bare come morning. It felt so natural, so instinctively normal, to wake up lying nude next to his husband, clad only in their matching wedding bands, that he hadn’t questioned it. Hadn’t considered the fact that this time two years ago he would have backed out of flirting with someone if they came on a little too strong.

“You’d better be making breakfast and not scrolling social media, because I have my first class in an hour and I can’t miss the bus on day o—Magnus?”

Magnus, currently swiping snot from his face, makes a questioning noise.

“Hey, hey… what’s wrong?” Alec asks, coming around to Magnus’s side in two quick strides. He cradles Magnus’s face in his hands, turning it up so he can see it properly.

The tenderness in his motions only makes Magnus cry harder, his shoulders shaking. “Nothing is wrong!” he manages to say, breaking into a smile, and he knows he probably looks a little unhinged smiling with black eyeliner-tears running down his face, but he can’t help it. He’s never been this happy—it’s like a weight that has been pressing down on his chest for over four hundred years is suddenly gone, having been lifted inch by inch by the sure hands of the man standing before him.

The man who is staring down, his face baffled and concerned in equal measure. “…Nothing is wrong?” he asks carefully. “But…”

“I know I’m crying,” Magnus laughs, reaching up past Alec’s hands to swipe tears from his eyes. “But it’s because I’m so happy. I’ve never—I’ve never been this happy, Alexander.”

Alec’s blue eyes flit over his face, searching, as if for some sign of dishonesty. It’s the same look that he gave Magnus once upon a time, back when Magnus said that he wanted to try a relationship. Same as last time, same as every time, Alec still won’t find anything there. No hesitation, no lie. Because Magnus means it—he really, truly does.

He can literally see the moment that Alec realizes he’s speaking truth. All the tension drains from Alec’s body, his face melting into a blinding smile. A moment later he’s pressing a kiss to Magnus’s lips, deep and soft and desperately in love.

It feels like coming home.

***

Magnus, he finds, isn’t the only one who has noticed the difference. Day after day he uploads vlogs, watching the commenters—some of whom have been following him for years—take note of the fact that he’s more cheerful, more energetic, more content. It gets to the point where Ragnor addresses it in one of his response videos, with a clipped—“A change of tone from earlier videos. Lightwood-Bane inconsistency at its finest.”

Magnus laughs so hard at that one that he swears he pulls something.

It’s nice, feeling the difference that a month, a year, two years can make. Alec, too, is changing—slowly, so slowly, Magnus can see his confidence and his ease in his own skin growing. He smiles more, laughs more, presses kisses to Magnus’s cheeks in public without flushing and hiding his face. He goes out to the club with Magnus and lets Magnus pull him out onto the dance floor, letting Magnus’s hands guide his hips as they laugh and grind and devolve into hot, heady kisses. Honestly, the only thing Magnus _can_ _’t_ get him to do is laugh on camera, but alas, he’s determined—it’s going to happen, and _soon_ , if he has any say in it.

Perhaps, if he plays his cards right, he can do it _right now_.

Magnus swipes his phone camera on, grabbing an apple from a nearby display and leaning over to where Alec is feeling oranges for bad spots. “Hey, babe, look!” he says. “It’s an ah-puh-play!”

“Excuse me?” Alec says, frowning at him.

“An uh-plee.”

“Uh…”

“Ap-lay. Ape-lay. Ah—”

Alec stares, glancing between the apple and the camera for a long moment as Magnus keeps going, mispronouncing the word ‘apple’ as many times as he can, getting more and more ridiculous as he goes. Then, wearing the most serious face Magnus has ever seen, Alec asks, “Are you having a stroke?”

A beat. Then Magnus bursts out laughing, folding over and holding his phone to his chest.

“I’m serious, Magnus. You sound like you’re having a stroke,” Alec says from somewhere above him. Jesus, his _tone_ —Magnus is laughing so hard that he fumbles what he’s holding. The phone drops, the recording coming to a screeching halt. Magnus makes no move to get it, too busy absolutely losing his shit. At least he held onto the apple, holy _fuck_.

Okay. Okay. He’s good. 

…Maybe.

Alec, when he manages to straighten back up again, has a devious little smirk on his face.

“You did that on purpose,” Magnus realizes, wiping a tear of laughter off his cheek. He’s still gasping, failing miserably to catch his breath and instead catching spontaneous bouts of giggles. His face feels like it’s going to crack in half, holy shit. “I can’t believe you. How dare you be funnier than me.”

Alec shrugs, plucking the apple from his hand and tossing it back at the apple pile. God. It’s like he doesn’t even try. Magnus huffs in exasperation. He’s got his phone now, scrolling back through the video to watch it from the beginning as Alec starts leading them toward the bananas. 

“I’m not posting this,” he announces a moment later.

Alec looks over, quirking an eyebrow. “Why not?”

Magnus throws up his hands. “You’re not laughing! I look like a moron laughing by myself!”

“As if you’re self-conscious of that. You’re one of a kind, Magnus Lightwood-Bane—if you got embarrassed every time you did something no one else dared to do you’d never recover.”

He says it so _casually_. Just… tosses it over his shoulder like it’s a universal truth. He’s so sure of himself that he doesn’t realize he’s rocked Magnus’s world until he happens to glance over and finds the stupid smile on Magnus’s face.

“Am I wrong?” he asks, quirking his eyebrow once again. 

Magnus shakes his head. God, he loves this man.

***

Their first anniversary, a July affair with a lot of teasing and videos and sharing chocolate strawberries, is there and gone in the blink of an eye. It’s the beautiful herald of Alec’s final year in school, and soon enough Alec’s graduation is upon them, bringing with it a mess of confetti and cake and streamers, all caught on camera. This is, of course, after the graduation dinner his parents throw—all champaign, caviar, and crushing upper crust political expectations. 

Magnus shakes his head. He prides himself in throwing a better party. One with friends and vodka and dancing, where he can spend the entire night plying Alec with alcohol in an attempt to get his husband drunk. It doesn’t take much, admittedly, but Magnus is taking full advantage while he can.

It’s completely worth the hangover, the sore muscles, and the grumpy husband he has to deal with the next day.

So life goes. Alec finds work as an assistant at a local social work agency, one of Magnus’s vlogs hits 500k views, and they finally, after like three years, manage to move all of Alec’s stuff out of the apartment that now belongs to Jace and one of Jace’s school friends, Simon. 

Alec is in and out of the hospital once, just before his twenty-third birthday—he gets a standard virus that, because his body is weak, wreaks a bit of havoc on his lungs. Not enough that a quick round of meds don’t help, but enough to make Alec miserable for a few weeks as Magnus frantically tries to do anything and everything to help him feel better.

It’s… normal. Their normal. As normal as it gets for a pair of queer men dealing with chronic illness. And normal it stays, until the day Alec walks into the kitchen and announces that he wants a kid.

***

“As in… a baby? You want a baby?” Magnus asks, pausing in the middle of chopping vegetables for dinner so that he can face his husband.

“No,” Alec says. He’s frowning, pacing back and forth across the kitchen like a panther pacing its cage. He’s been agitated for weeks now, and Magnus brushed it off as stress at work. 

Now he’s not so sure.

“…There’s this boy,” Alec starts, a moment later. He’s come to a stop, now looking up at Magnus with his arms folded across his chest and his feet planted. As if he’s getting ready for a fight.

Magnus has absolutely no idea what this is about. He sets down the knife, waiting for Alec to keep going.

He does, after a moment. “He’s eight. Just got transfered to a group home. He’s been in the system for three years.”

“And you want to… foster him?” Magnus asks, testing the waters.

Alec nods, very serious.

“There are a lot of kids in the system,” Magnus says slowly. “Why this one?”

“He’s trans.” And then, a moment later, “His name is Max.”

***

The process for applying to foster kids is… a lot. Background checks and paperwork and home inspections and, their biggest hurdle and the part Alec is dreading the most, proof of health, both mental and physical. 

“I’ll start with the good news,” the social worker says, once they’re seated in front of her. 

Magnus, already holding Alec’s hand, rubs a soothing thumb across the back of it. Alec has slipped into military posture, back ramrod straight as he looks across the desk at the woman who holds one path of their possible futures in her hands. He does it so rarely these days, but Magnus can’t fault him for slipping into old habits. He’s very nervous about this, they both are. The social worker could very well decide that they’re unfit to foster kids, after all. 

If it goes that way, Magnus has no doubt that Alec will fight it with everything he has. Magnus has never seen his husband so determined to do something in his life, and that’s certainly saying something.

It’s beautiful to watch, if a little heartwrenching. Magnus sees the ferocity in Alec, the single-minded tenacity, and feels his heart begin to speed up, butterflies in his stomach waking from their slumber. It’s like he’s twenty-three again, watching Alec, eighteen and relentless, take on the world—like he’s falling in love with the man all over again.

“The good news?” Alec prompts.

“You’ve passed the background checks and the home inspections, which means you’re more than halfway through your home study. Unfortunately, however, we’ve hit a bit of a hitch.”

“A hitch,” Alec repeats. His hand tightens on Magnus’s, and Magnus squeezes back.

The social worker opens the file in front of her, flipping through it. She settles on a series of charts, pursing her lips as she looks them over. After a moment she sighs, looking up. “Alec… I’ve known you for a few years now. You’re a good guy, good with the kids. But your health records are… not great.”

Alec swallows. Magnus wishes he could reach over and pull him into a hug, to shield him from what’s coming. Alec has already gotten attached—he’s going to _break_ when this falls through.

For now, however, he’s still standing strong. “The statement from Dr. Hodge—”

“It says you’re physically health is good enough right now, yes. But it also says your condition can deteriorate quickly in a short time. Max is eight years old, she—”

“He.”

“Right. I’m sorry. He’ll need a home and support for ten years at least. Are you absolutely sure you can provide that?”

“Look, average life expectancy for CF patients is, at minimum, forty-two years,” Magnus says, taking the baton from Alec with the gentle squeeze of a hand. “Alec is twenty-four right now, and has fairly mild symptoms. We can reasonably expect him to make it to forty-two. That’s more than enough time to raise an eight-year-old boy to adulthood. All that aside, I have no expiration date.” Magnus smiles, spreading his hands wide, his right still holding onto Alec’s. “I’ll be here even if Alec can’t for any reason.”

Magnus stares steadily at the social worker as she scrutinizes the pair of them, a furrow in her brow. “…Very well,” she says, after a few long minutes. “You’ve made your case, Magnus. Alec. I’m going to bring this to my supervisor. Sit tight.”

She leaves the room, taking the file with her. The moment she’s out of the room, Alec wilts, coughing into his elbow. Magnus draws the hand he’s still holding up to his lips, pressing a kiss to Alec’s knuckles. “She’ll say yes. Just you wait,” he says.

Alec nods, clearing his throat. He doesn’t look quite convinced, but the set of his jaw lets Magnus know that he’s planning to turn this entire building over if the social worker comes back with any other answer.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to. The social worker is smiling when she comes back, and she gives them the good news without preamble—Alec is allowed to foster so long as he gets a statement from his doctor every six months saying that he’s still physically fit enough to take care of the child.

It takes a moment for the news to sink in. Magnus, stunned, looks over at his husband, the weight of what they’re doing—the weight of _fatherhood_ —finally settling on his shoulders. He clutches at Alec, panicked.

Alec, who has broken into a radiant smile, his hand letting go of Magnus’s in order to pull Magnus into a hug.

…What on earth has Magnus gotten himself into.

***

They meet the kid two weeks later, in one of the little lounge meeting rooms at the agency. Well, ‘they’—Alec already knows the kid. It’s Magnus who is the odd one out here.

He breathes out slowly, willing the nerves to die down. They’re coming out as jitters and fidgeting, his fingers snapping and tapping. Not a good first impression, especially your first impression with the kid who might be coming to live in your house. Kids can tell when adults are uncomfortable with them. Magnus could certainly tell as a kid—he was constantly surrounded by adults who didn’t want anything to do with him, and not to say that hurt more than he’s willing to admit and still stings to this day, but it hurt more than he’s willing to admit and still stings to this day.

Besides, it’s not just the kid he’s worried about. If he doesn’t fit with the kid, then fine—there will be someone else, another family who can take him. But Alec… if they get this far and Alec is thwarted by the fact that Magnus and the kid don’t get along… god. Magnus would never forgive himself. Alec doesn’t ask for much—he hardly ever demands anything. If Magnus can’t give Alec the one thing he wants, the one kid he has his heart set on… suffice to say that they’ll both be devastated.

“Hey, come back to me,” says a low voice, coaxing Magnus out of his head. It’s Alec, and he’s taken one of Magnus’s twitching hands in both of his own. “What’s wrong?” he asks, very serious.

“What if I don’t like him?” Magnus blurts, before he can stop himself. “God, what if _he_ doesn’t like _me_?”

Alec stares for a moment. Then, just when Magnus is starting to sweat, he breaks into a smile. “Not possible,” he says. “You two will love each other.”

“Okay, but how do you know that?!”

“Let’s just say I have it on faith,” Alec hums, and then the door opens and a kid is barreling in, a blur of dark skin and blue clothes.

“Alec!” he says, and Alec is up and lifting him in a bear hug, spinning him around in no time at all. He’s laughing when Alec finally sets him down, and then, all at once, he’s face to face with Magnus.

Magnus manages to dredge up a smile from somewhere in the depths of his psyche. “Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Max says back. Then, “You have red in your hair!”

Magnus’s hand flies to his head before he remembers that yes, he dyed it a few days ago. It’s more of a maroon, actually, but he doesn’t correct the kid, just nods.

“How did you do that?” the kid asks, leaning a little closer. His eyes are huge.

Magnus casts a helpless look at Alec, who is standing to the side, smirking. He’s clearly not going to help, damn him. 

“…It’s a process,” Magnus finally says, after the silence has stretched on just a tad too long. “Like a chemical process. You bleach out the natural color and turn it blond and then you can dye it other colors.”

He’s nervous that the kid won’t understand—honestly speaking, Magnus doesn’t know anything about eight-year-olds or how much they understand about the world—but Max seems to take it all in stride, as his next question is a simple, “Can anyone do it?”

Magnus blinks, glancing over at Alec once more. “Uh. Yeah, I don’t see why not?”

Max nods. Then, taking the seat beside Magnus, he starts telling them about how he’s going to dye his hair blue because blue is his favorite color, and how the last time he went to the fair he got a blue butterfly painted on his face, and how Alec always brings him blue popsicles because Alec is, and he quotes, ‘the coolest’. 

For the first time today, Magnus lets out a laugh. “He is, isn’t he,” he says, his lips quirking up.

“Yeah!” Max says, and then the kid is off, talking about how he always comes to visit Alec when he’s at the agency with the social worker. The sheer adoration on his young face makes Magnus’s heart melt into a gooey mess in his chest.

He understands now. Why Alec fell in love with this kid, that is. He feels his smile growing, like sprouts in a garden shooting for the sun. 

Love… he thinks he’s halfway there, himself.

***

Folding Max into their lives takes so little effort, yet consumes so much of their attention and focus, that it’s three years before Magnus has the chance to step back far enough to see how much things have _changed_.

It’s in the second bedroom of the loft, now fitted with a bed and dresser and desk instead of the bookshelves and exercise equipment. It’s in the school books scattered all around the living room, the backpack left willy-nilly by the door. It’s in the fact that Sunday is pancake day, and there are no pancakes if there are no chocolate chips, a lesson that Magnus learned the hard way.

…It’s in the fact that when Alec comes home with that _look_ on his face, Magnus knows their family is about to grow again.

Alec tells Magnus the story late one night, propped up on his elbow in their bed. How he happened to stumble upon another kid getting shuffled through the system, one branded as ‘high risk’ and a ‘trouble-maker’ with ‘communication and behavioral issues’. 

“He’s deaf,” Alec says, toying with Magnus’s wedding ring. “And he’s having a lot of trouble in school. He can’t speak or read lips, and he refuses to communicate unless people use sign. And I thought… fuck it. I learned some sign when I was eight. Let’s see how rusty I am.”

“And?” Magnus asks, pressing his thumb to Alec’s furrowed brow. Alec’s blue eyes rise, meeting his gaze with an intensity that makes Magnus’s knees go weak. It’s a good thing he’s laying down, honestly.

“And he lit up, Mags. I’ve never seen someone turn a one-eighty so fast.”

Magnus hums, stroking Alec’s hair. Alec is twenty-seven, a bit more weathered and worn than he was at eighteen, but he’s still holding fast. How could Magnus say no?

So they move, piling their things into a three-bedroom apartment closer to Max’s school, and with them comes the newest Lightwood-Bane—Rafael, also known as Rafe, all of fifteen years old. The whole family throws themselves into learning sign, welcoming him in with open arms.

It doesn’t take long after that to figure out why Rafe was having such a hard time in school. One night sitting with him, trying to help him through a sheet of word problems as they finger spell at each other, and Alec realizes that it’s not communication he has an issue with—it’s reading. One specialist later and they learn that he has dyslexia, which makes it hard for him to follow along with written words.

It’s a breakthrough, beautiful and poignant. Magnus has never been more proud of his family than he is in that moment, as Alec and Rafe sit together and brainstorm ways to help Rafe figure this out. Magnus sits on the loveseat, Max lounging against him, as he watches his boys sign back and forth with increasingly hilarious faces, gestures getting more and more exaggerated.

 _It_ _’s like it was meant to be_ , he thinks one night, standing in the bathroom beside Alec brushing his teeth. The irony that Max is named Max and Rafe is named Rafael is not lost on Magnus. It’s like they were made to fit together like this, made to come together into their odd jumble of a family. Things that have been missing, a little brother and the version of a friend long lost to time, have come back, different but still somehow unchanged.

It’s beautiful. It’s incredible. And then, of course, the fight happens.

***

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Alec says for the sixth time in the last hour. His hair, usually neatly parted, is sticking straight up from the sheer number of times he’s run his fingers through it. At any other time, Magnus would find this simply adorable—right now, it’s just stressing him out more.

“I know,” Magnus says, and then winces as Alec doubles over coughing. It takes Alec a moment to catch his breath, but then he’s straightening up again, back to pacing the sidewalk in front of their apartment building. “Someone will find him sooner or later, I’m sure they will—”

“What if they don’t? We need to call the cops. File a report or something.”

Magnus pulls a face. “We’re not calling the cops on our deaf sixteen-year-old son, honey. I’m sorry, but no. There’s no way that would go well.”

“…You’re right. You’re so right, I just—I don’t know what to _do_ —”

Another fit, and this time Magnus reaches out to snag Alec’s sleeve, pulling him until he’s sitting on the curb beside him. “What you’re going to do first is take a deep breath,” he says, brooking no argument.

Alec gives him an acidic look, but he does as told, making an attempt to steady his breathing. 

“Good,” Magnus says, after a moment of this. “Now, lets think this out again. What happened?”

“Rafe got in a fight at school,” Alec says, rote. “Was sitting in the principals office, slipped out while no one was looking, and has been missing for…” He checks his watch, the nice one that Magnus got him for his twenty-fifth birthday. “Four hours now.”

“Good. So what did we do?”

Alec’s jaw grinds. “We tried calling his cell, which is off, and sent Jace and Izzy out after him. Which is fine and all, but I still think we should be out there, too—”

“We talked about this. We need to be home base. Max is upset enough as it is, we don’t need to freak him out by taking him out searching when other people can do it better and faster.”

For a moment Alec is quiet, leaning over his knees and pressing his hands against his face. “I don’t like this,” he says, finally, after the silence has dragged on far longer than Magnus would like.

“I know, you do better when you’re out there bossing everyone around. But we have to trust your siblings, okay, babe?” Magnus says. He’s rewarded with a slow nod, Alec dragging his hands down his face. 

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he goes rigid.

“Wha—” Magnus starts, only to turn as a familiar car pulls into the lot. Alec is already on his feet, striding across the pavement as Jace pulls into a spot at the front of the building. Magnus, a split second behind, comes up behind him just as Jace and his boyfriend, Simon, climb out. And with them, sulking in the backseat, his arms crossed over his chest—

“You found him,” Alec says, melting in relief. He waves a hand in front of the window, signing for Rafe to come out. 

…The fear that crosses Rafe’s face before he slowly pushes the door open makes Magnus’s heart hurt. He looks like he’s getting ready to get sent back to the group home, preparing himself to be uprooted from their lives once again.

The shock on his face when the first thing Alec does is _hug_ him would be comical if it weren’t so heartwrenching.

<I was so worried> Alec signs, as soon as he lets go. <Why did you run?>

Rafe shrugs, avoiding eye contact. Alec, taking absolutely none of this shit, waves a hand for his attention and keeps signing.

<Tell me. Tell me what you were thinking. So I can fix it for next time.>

<Next time? Who says I’m going to be around that long?> Rafe asks, looking startled, looking defiant, looking like he’s wearing a studded jacket made of sharp words, just like Magnus before him.

Alec pauses to cough into his elbow before raising his head and nodding. <You’re not going anywhere. We make mistakes. We break noses. But when Lightwoods break noses they accept the consequences, and that applies to Lightwood-Banes, too.> He looks back at Magnus, his eyes blazing. <Right?> he asks.

Magnus nods, his heart beating in time with the fire pulsing in Alec’s gaze. It’s true, they do. And as Alec begins a speech about owning up to your mistakes and working to make things better and how, despite all that, they’re still a family at the end of the day… well.

He has a feeling they’ll get through this just fine.

***

Christmas that year comes, a swirl of festivities and cheer, and then it goes. New years, too, after that, here and gone the same way. Easter, their anniversary, the end of one school year and the start of another. Halloween, thanksgiving… and then it starts all over again, a circle, a cycle, that is as different as it is the same every time around.

It’s life, it’s beauty, it’s love and pain and domesticity. It’s everything, every piece something new and old and different but always, always the same. In sickness and in health, something old something new something borrowed something blue. Magnus is lost in the threads of it all, watching them knit themselves together to form a whole, entire life. 

But there’s one thread, one person, who holds everything together. And, despite how good everything else is, Magnus can’t help but see the toll it all takes.

“I’m so tired,” Alec says, and Magnus can see the thread beginning to stretch taut, the edges of it beginning to fray. The older Alec gets the weaker his lungs become, his mortality closing in around them both like a metal band, cinched tight. He’s had seven good years with Rafe, ten good years with Max, sixteen good, _full_ years with Magnus, but he can’t keep going the way he’s always gone.

Jogging goes first, sworn off when he gets home from a quick one around the block wheezing like he can’t catch his breath and has to spend the rest of the afternoon holed up in bed. Archery is next—he’s losing muscle mass, unable to keep up in the gym anymore, his hands beginning to shake as he draws back the bow string. He holds out with sex for as long as he can, skating by letting Magnus take care of him sweet and slow, but eventually even that gets to be too much. Little by little he has to give up pieces of his life to appease his lungs, fighting infection after infection after infection, until there’s nothing much left.

It’s a downhill slide from there, gradual and then growing steeper and steeper as the years and the months go by. In and out of the hospital he goes, for longer and longer each time. Until he’s on oxygen twenty-four hours a day, until he can barely walk, until his lungs get down to thirty percent function and Dr. Hodge tells them, in all seriousness, that if Alec wants to survive to see forty he’s going to need a lung transplant.

So he goes on the transplant list, and the wait begins. And Magnus has to smile around the lump in his throat as he watches his husband, his strong, vibrant husband, struggle to get up in the mornings and struggle to sleep at night and struggle to live even a fraction of his life. He holds fast, though, holds steady with a camera in his hand, because he knows the last thing Alec wants right now is for Magnus to fall apart. They talked about this, from the beginning—and sixteen good years followed by three not so good years followed by two horrible years is not only an outcome that they have been preparing for all this time, it’s one of the better options. Better than Alec getting sick at twenty-two, or twenty-five, or thirty, or even thirty-five. He’s thirty-nine now, and though this isn’t the best outcome, it’s certainly not the worst.

The bottom line is that they’ve gotten this far, and they still have a shot. A shot at a donor, a shot at a new life. Their fingers are crossed, because there’s still a _chance_.

Magnus reminds himself of this as he sits in the back of the ambulance late one night. Alec may be deteriorating faster than they thought he would, he might be having more bad nights than good at this point, but there’s still a chance that a donor will come, and all they need is that _one last shot_.

Tonight is a bad night. A really bad night. Alec was wheezing and the BiPAP wasn’t helping and he could hardly breathe, so Magnus made the decision to call an ambulance for him. They left the kids at home—where they’re staying despite the fact that they both moved out years ago—because this has happened a few times already. Alec will spend a few days in the hospital as the doctors help with his lungs, and then he’ll be out again, until next time, when it happens all over again.

Alec is adamant than Magnus doesn’t have to come with him every time, but Magnus doesn’t mind. He stays with him the whole time, updating everyone through regular vlogs. People know the drill now. This is their new normal.

Until it isn’t. Until the doctors come back to say that Alec’s body is fighting too many infections at once, and the infections are winning. Magnus calls the kids and his friends and Alec’s siblings, all in a panic, not caring that it’s already late at night. 

Because it’s happening. It’s become clear. If a donor doesn’t come soon… if a miracle doesn’t happen, well…

…this is it. This will be the end.

***

“Yeah, yeah… I’ll call and update you soon,” Magnus says. He’s been fielding calls all day, from all directions. He’s thinking about hiring a secretary just so that he can do less updating and more holding his husband. He sighs, pushing his thumb and his forefinger up against his closed eyes. 

Unbidden, the flowers in Alec’s private hospital room drift to the forefront of Magnus’s mind. _Thoughts and prayers, from Maryse and Robert Lightwood_ , the card on them says, in an impersonal curlicue script.

Magnus wants to rip that card to shreds.

He won’t, though. He’s just… he’s so _tired_. Exhausted down to his very bones. Which is _nothing_ compared to how Alec is feeling right now. How hard he’s fighting, how hard it is just lying in bed, inhabiting a body. Alec is fighting for his life, for enough time to find a donor, and Magnus is just along for the ride. This hospital, this room, is his own personal hell, but it will always be Alec’s more than Magnus’s. 

So with that in mind, Magnus forces a smile onto his face and heads back into Alec’s room to sit with his husband, same as he’s done every day since they came to this infernal place, where he gets to see the only thing that makes it any better: his husband’s eyes rising to meet his own, still as beautifully and breathtakingly blue as the day they first met.

But something is wrong. Something has _been_ wrong. Ever since those damn flowers arrived, Alec has kept his eyes down on the sheets before him. And now, in the space where he would usually tug Magnus into bed with him, clearly thankful that his husband is here, Alec folds his thin arms in and hugs himself.

“What is it?” Magnus asks, his heart sinking. “I—do I need to get a nurse, do I need to—?”

“You need to go,” Alec says, pulling the oxygen mask down from his face so he can be heard clearly.

“Go where?” Magnus asks, baffled and, suddenly, inexplicably, more than a little afraid. “I don’t have anywhere I need to go. I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”

Alec is clearly not listening, his face twisted in an exhausted facsimile of sorrow. “This is wrong,” he says.

Ice. Ice, growing like spikes in Magnus’s chest. “…What are you saying?” he hardly dares to ask.

Alec takes a wheezing breath, as deep as he can, which is barely anything at all. It doesn’t prepare either of them for the words that come out of his mouth. 

“I shouldn’t have done this. I should have just… settled for a girl who didn’t really love me. I shouldn’t be breaking your heart.”

Twenty-one years. They have had twenty-one years. Twenty-one whole revolutions around the sun to set down roots and build houses and tie themselves together. And here Alec is, trying to pull the foundations up just like that. 

Alec is pushing him away, and that scares Magnus more than anything else ever has.

Magnus’s voice cracks on his husband’s name. “Alexander.”

Alec closes his eyes. “No, don’t—don’t pretend it’s okay. I can see how much you’re hurting. My parents were right, I—”

“Screw your parents!” Magnus bursts out, suddenly, explosively, the words spilling out of him. They are years in coming. “If your parents actually cared about you in any capacity they would never have pressured you to get married to a woman! Ever! Period! They never would have pushed you to do something that made you unhappy just to save face at the church that said your sickness was a punishment for being gay!”

“It’s not that simple—” Alec starts, his eyes closing.

“It is, though! Where are your parents when you need them, Alec? Where are they now?! Far away, sending thoughts and prayers, how _magnanimous_ of them.”

Alec gasps, refusing to open his eyes, refusing to look up at Magnus. “They’ve been through so much, with Max—”

It isn’t fair to raise his voice when Alec can hardly speak in more than a whisper, but Magnus can’t help it. “So have you!” he cries, volume rising. “ _Why is it_ that you think _everyone else on the fucking planet_ is allowed to feel pain and grief but _you aren_ _’t_? Why do you let them get away with holding you at arms length _when you_ _’re suffering just as much, if not more_?”

“Magnus, please,” Alec says, and his voice is thready. “You’re not allowed to yell in the ICU—”

“ _And you_ _’re not allowed to push me away! In sickness and in health!_ ” Magnus yells. _Screams,_ really. He sucks in a deep breath, feeling the pulse of tears waiting to be shed behind his eyes. He takes a deep breath, calming himself so he can say what’s been festering in his heart ever since those flowers arrived. “You deserve to have someone who will help you through all of this. Who will stay until the end. If this is it, if this is the end of your time on earth, then you should get to have someone at your side. Someone who will help carry your burdens. Someone who wants to hold you, and love you, and—and— _god_ , Alexander. I didn’t come all this way with you just to throw away the last moments I get to spend with my husband. I’m _staying_.”

He wants to regret it. He feels like he should regret screaming at his dying husband. But for the first time in a long time, Alec looks… awake. Fully, truly awake, like he’s not just drifting through a daze of pain meds and antibiotics. His eyes are open, and they’ve met Magnus’s gaze for the first time in days, and afterward, as Magnus feels hot tears slip down his face, it’s the first time in what feels like forever that Alec reaches for him. Reaches out to hold him. 

It’s the first time in a long time that Alec _lets him in_.

***

It takes less than a week before Alec’s body is too weak to fight on its own. His lungs, his heart… his everything, all of it is just… too weak.

So they put him on ECMO. Put him under. With a tube in his mouth. IV’s everywhere. Wires and tubes, so many wires and so many tubes that Magnus wants to cry because his husband is dying and it’s not _fair_.

There’s still hope, though. Just a sliver, a splinter of it stuck deep in the muscle of his heart. Fourteen days—that’s how long they say Alec can survive on ECMO. How long they have to find a donor. 

The hope… god. It hurts, every time he breathes—every time his heart pumps he feels it, like glass, lodged in his chest. If they can get a donor, if they can just make it long enough to get a donor—

Magnus breathes out, pressing Alec’s cold, slim hand between his own two healthy ones. He posted a vlog yesterday, just before the ECMO, saying that he’s going on hiatus. He cited a personal crisis, but really it’s because he knows his heart isn’t in it. Vlogging is just so _trivial_ in the grand scheme of things. Who cares if he posts a fucking video? It’s not life or death if he gets a few thousand views, more or less. There are more important things in this life. They are up against the precipice, now, and Magnus wouldn’t miss this for the world because, as cheesy as it sounds, Alec _is_ his world.

“You can do this, sweetheart,” he whispers, his voice low, fighting against the hum of machines. “You can do this. You can keep holding on, I know you can. You are a fighter that comes from a family of fighters. Lightwoods break noses and accept the consequences, okay, I know you, I know all of you and how freaking stubborn you all are. So just hold on, okay, darling? Just a little bit longer and there will be a donor and this will all be a nightmare that we wake from together and—and—”

His voice nearly breaks, but he manages to keep it in check. With his next breath, he begins to softly sing.

“And if I only could… I'd make a deal with God… and I'd get him to swap our places…”

“Dad,” says a voice behind him. “Are you… are you singing Running Up That Hill?”

Magnus huffs a laugh, wetter than he means to. He has no idea when Max came in, or Rafe for that matter. “Yes, Max, I am, because your father would hate it and he needs motivation to get through this so he can tell me to my face just how much he hates it,” he says.

He doesn’t look to see what expression Max has on, what Max or, once Max signs what he’s said to Rafe, what Rafe will think of it. 

Fourteen days. Fourteen days, and this will be over. One way… or another.

***

The vigil held at Alec’s bedside goes on day and night. Magnus is pried away, the hand he was holding taken by Izzy, Jace, the kids, their friends, others. He never goes far. Just to the cot set up on the other side of the room, where he falls into sleep, exhaustion taking over.

He closes his eyes on a hospital room, and he opens them again to Will. Always Will, in his London fog, forever young and playful and confident. Sixteen seems so far away to Magnus now. He is forty-four years old, and Will is a ghost, a fragment, and there is no comfort to be found here.

Will watches, flipping his hat in his hands, wearing his Victorian costume with his ratty sneakers, as Magnus walks up to him. He smiles, the same as he ever does. But this time… this time Magnus walks right on past him. 

He doesn’t know where he’s going. Still, he walks, and he walks, until the cobblestones turn to grass beneath his feet and a massive tree begins to manifest from the mist, looming a hundred feet above his head. And from the tree, his mother, hanging forever on her swing, in her white dress and her white hat, the brim pulled down over her face. She raises her hands, her brush poised to begin its path down her long, flowing hair.

Magnus doesn’t stop. He walks past her, too. Walks as the grass rises, the tree falling behind him as he walks, and soon he’s pushing through the waist-high grass of an open field where Raphael waits, young and laughing, a soundbite frozen in time. 

And beyond him, where a river cuts through the grass and mountains rise up all around, Magnus goes, wading into the water and passing his stepfather, standing still in the rushing current, staring out at nothing, water dripping from his hands. 

And further, to a place where the water runs dry, where the sun goes down and the moon comes out, the rays of moonlight shining down like a spotlight as the mountains grow into walls grow into a room, and there’s Camille, waiting, at her table. Her glass shines, her red dress lit like embers, but he doesn’t stop, walking right on past as she laughs her tinkling laugh. 

He walks and he walks and he passes a table with a photograph, _the_ photograph, the one of little Max Lightwood, smiling his gaptoothed smile, the other three figures blurred out but still Magnus doesn’t stop, just keeps walking, leaving them behind, all of them—

—Will in the London mist, and his mother with the hundred foot tall tree, and Raphael, laughing, and his stepfather with his dripping hands, and Camille in her red dress, and the picture, the picture of little Max—

—searching, searching for a sign of life, of something _real_ —

—searching for a way out of this dream, this _nightmare_ —

—and his breath catches and his throat grows tight and he knows—

—he _knows_ —

—that there’s no—

—more—

— _time_ —

—And, just like that, it all

comes

to

an

 _end_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me or are these chapters just getting longer?


	7. +1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec's death.

***

You think you’re ready. You’ve read the books, you’ve talked to counselors and doctors and therapists, you’ve listened to people describe how it happened to them, all of it over and over and over again. 

It’s been a long time coming. Twenty-one years, in fact. You think, _I_ _’ve been through this before_. You think, _I_ _’ll get through this again_. You think, _I_ _’m not happy… but I’m ready_.

You’re not ready. You’re never ready.

It happens on the twelfth day of the vigil. For twelve days, Alec hangs on, his every breath a battle, hard fought and bloody. Every hour that passes, breath after breath after breath, is a war, and every day at war is an eternity, and Magnus waits at his side, holding his hand, fingers crossed for a miracle, through it all. 

People come. And people go. Maryse shows up, her face lined with sorrow, and Magnus knows this does not absolve her of her sins, the fact that she gave too little, too late, but he’s glad she’s here now. She takes the hand that Magnus isn’t holding, sitting beside her son as the clock ticks down.

There is no fanfare to herald the end. Just a slow, steady shut-down, Alec’s body too weak, after everything, to fend off the infections. He is already unconscious. He slips, quietly and without sound, into the abyss.

And Magnus Lightwood-Bane… forty-four years old, open and out bisexual, husband father and friend… lives on.

***

The world is moving. It’s turning, drifting through space the same as it ever does. Magnus knows this by the way the sun sinks, ever lower, toward the city skyline outside the window. 

The doctor has removed the tubes. He’s removed the wires. Alec is free. Free from the machines and the monitors, free from his infected blood and his deteriorating lungs and his weakened heart. He’s no longer in pain, no longer fighting.

Magnus breathes, and the splinter of hope digs so deep into his heart that he wheezes. _He can still wake up_ , that damned splinter says. _Miracles happen. He can start breathing on his own, he can open his eyes and sit up and_ —

Magnus grips the splinter and, in one swift motion, yanks it from his chest. 

It isn’t pretty. It’s as if that damn splinter, small as it was, was the only thing holding back a hurricane. Without it he feels as sobs start to build, a storm surge rising to batter the backs of his eyes. 

He squeezes them shut. It does no good. He can’t hold it all back, all the seawater and the wind and the rain pouring from roiling skies. The hurricane lands, floodwater pouring into the rivers and streets, pushing inland until a dam bursts inside him. 

He watches, a morbid fascination growing within him, as his heart bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.

***

Catarina is the first to approach him. She places a hand on his back, stroking up and down, holding him together even as the storm tries to tear him apart. 

There’s a part of him that wishes she wouldn’t, that she’d just let the hurricane do what hurricanes do. This is the part that’s still holding on, still clutching his husband’s hand, pressing it to his cheek like this is the last lifeline he has and it’s slipping out of his grasp. The part that knows that Alec was his one great love and that he’s gone, now, ripped from Magnus’s grip even as he held as tight as he humanly could. The part that knows how heartwrenching it was when Magnus was thirteen, to realize that Death had settled in closer than any friend, holding a hand out in the darkness to steal Will away, and the part that knows how heartwrenching it is now, at forty-four, to realize that Death isn’t done yet. That Death will never be done, that it will never be finished, that it will never be pleased, just taking and taking and taking until there is _no one left to take_ —

But… that isn’t the only part. There’s another part, a smaller part, sitting like a stone, unchanged, as the ocean crashes against it. This part… it’s just happy that he had his husband for any time at all. It is a part that knows, inexplicably, how much better life was for having known Alexander Gideon Lightwood-Bane. A part that is grateful for their time together, no matter how short it was.

…It’s this part, small and insignificant as it seems in the midst of the storm, that doesn’t let Magnus wrench away from Catarina as she attempts to soothe him. _Keep fighting_ , it’s saying. _This is not the end_. _You still have more to do before you can rest_.

“I know,” he says aloud, choked through a sob. “I know, I know, I—”

“Shhhhhh…” Catarina says, shushing him. She’s pulled him against her side, her fingers stroking through his hair.

He cries. For so long, he cries. Then, taking a deep breath, he lets go of Alec’s hand.

***

Organizing a funeral is a lot less fun than organizing a wedding. 

The good news is that they got through most of the nitty-gritty stuff months ago, while Alec was still able to help, to take charge. It’s only the fine details that Magnus has to deal with now. He sighs, pressing his hands to his face.

The day of the event dawns with clear skies, odd for a late April day in New York City but certainly not unwelcome. Magnus spends the morning standing in his closet, feeling down the rows of hangers for the black suit—the one with the floral brocade in black thread—that he knows is in here somewhere. 

He should have gotten it out yesterday. He knows this. He’s going to be late. But somehow he just can’t find it in himself to care. He’s dangerously close to the divide in the closet between _his_ and _Alec_ _’s_ —and it’s strange, how his hands tremble more and more the closer he gets.

He takes a deep breath. The kids are gone already—they left early to make sure everything was ready. He has to get through this alone. 

He can’t get through this alone.

Thankfully, his friends were ready for this. It’s only a few minutes before Raphael shows up to fetch him. 

Magnus almost feels a smile twitching at his cheek. He thought it would be Catarina, honestly. Her caring nature would make her the perfect sacrifice sent to deal with the grieving husband. Or, barring Catarina, he thought it might be Jem—soft, solid Jem, who’s kindness and compassion can weather any storm. But no. It’s Raphael. Short-tempered and impatient, whose eyes are already red despite the fact that he’d continued to resolutely call Alec ‘Lightwood-Bane’ until the very day he died.

“You’re going to be late,” Raphael says, fiddling with the lapel of his suit jacket. He refuses to meet Magnus’s eyes.

“I’m almost ready,” Magnus says. There’s the jacket he’s looking for—right at the back, right at the fault line. He takes a deep breath before he slips it off its hanger. Raphael, still standing in the middle of the room, grunts in annoyance as Magnus pulls it on, slowly, an inch at a time. He grunts again a moment later as Magnus sits down at the vanity mirror to put on his eyeliner, the waterproof one. Magnus can feel the weight of Raphael’s frown boring into his back as he then pauses by the dresser, slipping his rings on one by one. Until, that is, he reaches his wedding ring—then Raphael looks away.

Magnus slips the gold band onto his ring finger, pushing it down to meet his engagement ring, breathing slowly out. There’s one last ring left on the dresser, now. He picks it up slowly, cradling it in his hand. He wants to put it on, to slip it down to nestle against its match, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. It’s not his, after all.

After a long moment he goes and finds a silver chain in his jewelry box, slipping the ring on the chain and the chain around his neck. 

“Okay,” Raphael says, voice gruff. “Let’s go.”

***

It’s a nice service, one of the nicer ones that Magnus has been to. This is mostly because it was funded in full by the elder Lightwoods and the church they belong to. Alec’s family is there, and Magnus’s friends. The kids, their friends. Social workers and hospital staff and family friends. Everyone who Alec touched. More.

Magnus resolutely ignores the people from the church who stand to one side, all dressed to the nines in black with righteous tears running down their faces as they cross themselves and whisper ‘amen’ after every speech. They are not worth his attention, not worth his time—not worth the seething anger he knows will grow in his chest like mold if he gives it a chance. He has no sympathy for them.

It does make him feel a little better to see that Maryse is not standing with them, as her husband is. She stands, instead, to one side, her head held high even as she buries her second child.

Afterward, after the church people have left and the rest of those gathered have given their condolences, Magnus stands before the freshly dug grave. In his hands is his phone—he swipes for the camera without thinking about it, so used to the motion that it takes him a moment to realize he’s recording. 

Right. Right. He should update his followers—it’s the least he can do. With heavy hands, slow and unsteady, he brings the camera up, focusing on the framed photograph that leans against the headstone. Max chose it, when Magnus had broken down crying over the folder full of hundreds and hundreds of photos of Alec. It’s one from a few years ago, before he got so sick—he’s not smiling, but there’s a lightness about his face, a joy in his eyes. 

Magnus stares, his mouth opening. Words, he needs to say words—but no words come. He can’t. He can’t do it. He raises one hand, pressing his fingers to his lips as nothing, nothing, nothing comes.

He can’t. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.

***

Magnus goes home soon after that. He goes home, and takes off his jacket, and plugs in his phone, and then he slips into bed and closes his eyes.

Summer comes, in his dreams. The Indonesian summer, hot and humid, complete with the animals in the pasture and the thick buzz of insects and the barn, the barn behind the house, looming in the distance.

Magnus knows what’s in the barn. He knows that she’s there, waiting, feet dangling above the earth. The last time he was here, he walked inside and found her. He knows. But so long as he stays here, in the heat of the sun, with the sounds of the animals all around him, that knowledge cannot hurt him. She’s not dead yet if he hasn’t yet found her, hanging in the barn. 

Not yet. Not yet. Not _yet_.

***

They’re hard, the dreams about his mother. Harder than the dreams of pacing in a hospital waiting room, waiting and waiting for Will to arrive and knowing he never will. But the hardest dream by _far_ is, oddly enough, the dream about magic. 

It comes two weeks after Alec’s funeral. Magnus is again a warlock, again immortal, again sitting in his own home with his magic thrumming beneath his skin. He snaps his fingers, watching blue energy curl from his fingertips, before he raises his head to survey the apartment around him. 

It’s the same as it ever is in this dream, all the artifacts of his normal life mixed in with strange magical contraptions and shelves of potion ingredients. But he’s not focused on the belongings scattered about—he’s focused, instead, on a second thrum of energy.

This one is massive, as big as the apartment itself. It is all around him, surrounding him, braided through the beams that form the skeleton of the building. Protective and secure, it is an extension of the magic that hums within him, though it pulses with its own, separate rhythm. 

A rhythm that, as he reaches out, feels just so slightly… off.

Magnus frowns, prodding it with a question. It hums back a response. _Waiting,_ it says. _Waiting_. 

It’s on the tip of his tongue to ask what it’s waiting _for_ , what could _possibly_ be missing, when Magnus realizes, all at once, who isn’t here.

Cold slides down the back of Magnus’s throat, as if he took a shot of straight dread. His arms erupt in goosebumps, his eyes going wide, wild. The energy… it’s patient, _so_ patient. It has the patience of something not quite alive, not fully sentient. Something that will wait forever, willfully ignorant, something that _doesn_ _’t_ _understand_. 

He covers his mouth with his hand, holding in a hysterical laugh. 

It doesn’t know that Alec isn’t coming. That Alec is gone for good. It is going to sit here, waiting and waiting for Alec to come back, to come home, and it will never realize that Alec is _never coming home again_.

A laugh escapes Magnus’s mouth. _Waiting_ , the energy says, more insistent, and he doubles over, laughter pouring from his throat. _Waiting, waiting, waiting_ —it rings in his ears like klaxon bells, and he can’t stop, he can’t stop the hysterical laughter because his husband is _dead_ , his husband is _buried_ , his husband will _never walk this earth again,_ and yet this energy, this magic, will wait. It will be here, waiting for Magnus’s dead husband, until the _very end of time itself_.

It hurts. It hurts more than _anything_. So he laughs, and laughs, and laughs some more, trying to hold himself together as he shakes apart in the middle of his living room, until he laughs so hard that he wakes himself up, sheets coated in a cold sweat, stomach heaving and bile at the back of his throat, staring wildly around the dark room as he swallows it all back down, expecting Alec to be there, to soothe his troubled mind the same as he always has, his snores grounding in the darkness after a nightmare, but he isn’t, Alec isn’t here, and it hits all over again that Alec is _gone_ , that this is _reality_ , that there are nightmares he _can_ _’t wake up from_. 

It’s in a panic that he snatches his phone from the bedside table, already skidding out of his bedroom door as he starts dialing the first number that comes to mind to ask, no, to _beg_ for a place to stay that _isn_ _’t here_. Somewhere, anywhere, that isn’t in a shrine dedicated to the life he lived with Alec.

***

“Come eat dinner,” Ragnor says, some time later. 

Magnus, who has been staring at the wall for three hours now, considers pretending to still be sleep. He’s lying on Ragnor’s spare bed, curled up on his side and with his back to the door, so it wouldn’t be hard. 

Then again, that would be rude. It’s Ragnor’s house, after all—Magnus is just crashing the party.

He should get up.

He should eat.

…He doesn’t move.

“I know you’re awake. Come eat, or I’ll send Raphael in,” Ragnor says next, after a moment waiting. His voice is its usual somber tone.

Magnus hums. A valid threat. But he’s not hungry, hasn’t been for weeks, and getting up seems like so much energy. He’d much rather sleep.

“You can sleep later. I won’t ask again,” Ragnor says, and the underlying steel in his tone makes it clear that he’s not kidding.

Fine. It takes a moment, but Magnus manages to roll onto his back, and then onto his other side, after which he levers himself up on an elbow and slips his socked feet off the bed and onto the floor.

“I checked in with Max,” Catarina says, all business, when he finally makes it to the table. “He says that Rafe is having a hard time, but they’re taking care of each other. Jace has been bringing them food, so there’s no need to worry about that.”

Magnus nods, rubbing a hand up his bare face and through his unwashed hair. He should have put makeup on for dinner, but just the thought of it is overwhelming. Almost as overwhelming as thinking about Max and Rafe. 

He winces as a dull pang of guilt shoots through him. He should be taking care of his sons. He should be—should be taking charge, helping them heal and making sure they’re okay. Instead he’s hiding out at Ragnor’s, refusing to face the two of them.

At least they have each other. The boys, he suspects, will be fine. Alec raised them well—Magnus wouldn’t expect anything less. 

It’s Magnus himself that he’s less sure about.

Ragnor interrupts his spiral, sliding a plate of alfredo in front of him. Magnus hums a thank you. It’s Catarina, Ragnor, and Raphael tonight—Tessa and Jem are… Magnus can’t remember where. They’re somewhere. They’ve been taking this in shifts for a while now, because dealing with him is what’s clinically known as a _major bummer_.

Still, it’s… good. Good to hear their voices washing over him, though he doesn’t really speak. Good to feel Catarina’s hand on his arm, and see Ragnor pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation, and watch Raphael roll his eyes and bitch about his duties as head of security at the hotel. 

There’s only one person who is missing. One person who will always be missing. 

One person who is never coming back.

Magnus swallows around a lump in his throat. His breath hitches in his chest. _Not again_ , he thinks. He’s sick of crying. Crying and sleeping, sleeping and crying, with the occasional nightmare thrown in just to spice things up—he’s _sick of this_. His entire life is collapsing around him—he can’t vlog, he can’t face his kids, he can’t _sleep in his own bed_.

He’s grieved for people before. He remembers doing it. He remembers his mother’s funeral, remembers waking night after night crying out for her. And then Will’s death, Will’s funeral, and everything that came afterward: the mood swings and frustration and tears, the dreams and tanking grades and fights with his friends as they all struggled to come to terms with it all. He remembers all of it. He’s done this _all before_. Why is this so much _harder_? Why does it feel like there’s _so much more_?

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says out loud, cutting across the conversation that has sprung up around him.

“Do what?” Raphael asks, wary.

Magnus gestures vaguely. Anything, he means. Everything. With a low whine, he throws a hand up over his eyes, as if he can hide away from the tears that are coming, from the pitying looks on the faces of his friends.

For a moment everything is quiet. Then from the silence Catarina stands, grabbing the back of Magnus’s chair and pulling it back from the table. 

“Come on,” she says. “Get your shoes on.”

***

They wind up at Tessa and Jem’s door. Magnus, still sniffling, is fairly baffled, to say the least—what on earth would they need to go bother the lovebirds for? It’s their night off, they don’t need to deal with him, too.

“Hush,” Catarina says, when he voices these thoughts aloud. Then she raises her hand to ring the bell.

Tessa opens the door a moment later, Jem peering over her shoulder. “Is it time?” she asks, looking them all over.

Catarina nods. “I think it is.”

“Time for what?” Magnus demands, but Tessa just smiles, going to get her shoes on. A few minutes later they’ve all piled into Catarina’s car, Catarina sitting, determined, at the wheel as she sets off heading east, away from the setting sun.

It’s a pleasant drive, if a little cramped. Magnus lets his head lean on Ragnor’s shoulder, dozing until the car pulls to a stop and the engine cuts out. He blinks his eyes open to find…

…coastline, the vast expanse of a cold, dark ocean spread before him.

The waters of New York are too far North to be comfortable most of the year, with only a small window during the day in mid-summer that is really worth going beachside for. As such, it’s too late, too cold, for most people to be lounging about. The six of them are nearly alone as they get out of the car, the last rays of sunlight slipping down on the other side of the skyline. The wind is frigid coming off the ocean—it’s chilling, and gloomy, and so, so familiar.

Magnus steps from the asphalt of the parking lot onto beach sand, and he feels his aching heart squeeze.

They came here. Once before. The six of them, that is. It was after Will’s death, after Jem was well enough to go out again. They’d been planning a trip out for a while—not for Will, but for Jem. Jem was _so sure_ that he was to die, and he had asked but one thing: that they go together and spread his ashes somewhere beautiful. He’d wanted them to find peace after he was gone, and he’d given them permission to let him go.

Then, of course, Will had crashed and Jem had lived, and in all the confusion afterward they had all been torn apart, friendships once dear now rife with arguments, with spitfire and anger and hate. Until Tessa had piled them into her car, that is. Until she took them here, to the ocean, where they could see their grief for what it was—something vast but beautiful, an ocean of love with nowhere to go.

Magnus watches the darkening dusk sky, the waves deepening to a bluish black as his friends come to stand in a line on either side of him. Catarina slips her arm into his, elbow to elbow, on his left. Tessa, to his right, does the same. He knows that it’s the same all the way down the line—Ragnor and Raphael elbow to elbow at Catarina’s left, and Jem linked with Tessa’s right, the six of them facing the cold expanse of the ocean together, once again, as the wind bites at Magnus’s face and the waves crash and the gulls circle lazily overhead.

They are missing pieces. All of them. It’s so easy to feel lost, alone, in the wake of tragedy, but Magnus isn’t the only one who has felt this. It is human, it is known—people have forged a path through grief for as long as there have been people, fighting the encroaching darkness on either side, each pass pushing the shadows back just that much farther.

How could Magnus have forgotten? How could he have let his grief overwhelm him so? He breathes in, his lungs filling all the way to the brim for what seems like the first time in weeks, the cold, briny air sharp against the lining of his throat. He feels, despite the tears in his eyes and the quiver in his lip and the the tremble in his hands, that something has settled, deep inside of him. 

_This is not the end_ , he thought, once upon a time. _This is not the end_ , he thinks, all over again. His heart beats a rhythm against his ribs, as if to remind him, for once and for all, to keep going. He presses a hand to his chest, to that beating heart, and feels the words like they’re pulsing through his bloodstream. 

Keep living. Keep going. Keep fighting. Keep on…

And on…

And on. 

Because this is not the end. Not yet. He still has so much to do before he rests. 

***

The first order of business is to return to his own apartment and take a fucking shower, because by god, Magnus reeks. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he showered, and that is a _mistake_. He spends nearly an hour under the hot water, scrubbing at himself with copious amounts of Alec’s bodywash until he’s convinced that he’s presentable.

Then comes the second order of business: clothes. Alec’s clothes. Namely the holey sweatshirt that was too big on Alec and that Magnus practically swims in, the one that still smells like him. And then, following clothes, eyeliner, because who can fight without eyeliner? Not Magnus Lightwood-Bane, _that_ _’s_ for sure.

Magnus glares at himself in the vanity mirror for a long moment once he’s done with that, staring himself down. He’s been lost, floating without a tether for weeks, almost _months_ now, aimless in the face of loss. Well, no more. He wouldn’t be Magnus Lightwood-Bane if he wallowed forever in his self-pity, now would he? It seemed so overwhelming when he was sitting at Ragnor’s table, but it’s just one step. And then one more. One… after another… after another. One step at a time is how you climb a mountain, how you run a marathon—it’s how you walk down the aisle at your wedding, how you walk up to a casket at a funeral.

It’s how you start your life over, after losing the man you love most in this world. 

And so, his husband clothes on, his eyeliner perfect, and his jaw clenched, Magnus throws open the door of the master bedroom and marches down the hall to the room Max and Rafe have been sharing. “Up,” he says, gesturing at the two lumps lounging on Rafe’s bed.

Max groans, elbowing his brother in the side to get his attention. Rafe blinks up, brows pinched in confusion. 

Magnus huffs, signing for them to get _up_ already. Then he sweeps from the room and starts marching toward the kitchen. He throws open the cabinets in a frenzy, pulling out boxes and packages and cans. When he spins again, everything he needs in his arms, he finds the kids hovering in the doorway.

He dumps the stuff on the counter by the stove. <In> he signs, beckoning. The two of them give each other a look before slowly coming into the room. He instantly puts them to work—measuring this and pouring that and cracking eggs and mixing it all up as he heats up a pan. He pours some batter in, and then, lips puckered up in concentration, he puts the chocolate chips in, making a little smiley face, the way he did when Max was eight.

Just the way it should be.

Twenty minutes later the pancakes are all done, and Magnus swings around the table putting plates down. He gestures for Rafe to get some orange juice out, and Max some cups, and then, laughing all the while, he pulls out the bottle of vodka that lives in the pantry.

Max and Rafe exchange another look. “Dad—” Max starts, but Magnus raises a hand, shushing him so he can pour out some shots and not screw up the optimal alcohol-to-juice ratio. A splash of cranberry juice, a straw for each, and voila! Perfect!

He gestures for the kids to take their seats.

<What are you _doing_?> Rafe signs, instead of sitting down.

<Listen,> Magnus says, very seriously. <I pride myself on throwing a better party than your grandparents, and that extends to memorials, too. We are going to sit here, and we are going to have pancakes and vodka, and we are going to remember the _shit_ out of your father because your father would have wanted us to.>

Rafe, his face thoughtful, slowly sits down.

So they eat pancakes. They laugh at the funny faces Magnus made with the chocolate chips. They drink their screwdrivers, the kids wincing at Magnus’s taste in alcohol… and they talk about Alec, spinning tales as the stars spin across the sky and the evening turns to night turns to morning.

How Alec tried to teach Max how to drive in Jace’s expensive car and wound up owing Jace three hundred dollars.

How Alec went ice skating with them once, fell so spectacularly that he managed to take all three of them down with him like dominoes, and, after making sure that everyone was okay, took off once again, determined to get it right.

How Alec used to wear his black leather jacket and his aviator sunglasses to IEP conferences and glare his way down the hall, and every single person in the high school thought he was the scariest dude to ever walk the halls until he opened his mouth and the most polite “Excuse me, where’s the conference room?” you ever did hear came out. 

They laugh. They cry. Max gets too excited about a story and chokes on a bite of pancake, making Rafe pound him on the back. And all the while, through it all, Magnus thinks about Alec, the strongest person he ever knew and the love of his life. He raises his drink in a toast, his head swimming from the alcohol. _For you_ , he thinks.

He can only imagine the smile and the eye roll Alec would give them if he could see them now.

***

It’s a turning point. The next day is a wash as they all sleep until four PM and wake up hungover, but the _next_ day, two days after the beach, Magnus turns around and makes the decision that he’s going to get his life back on track. A new track. A track that he’s never seen before, one he never thought was possible for him. 

College, he finds, is finally calling his name.

The first step in his plan is simple on the surface, but he knows he can’t do it on his own. Moving out of the apartment he once shared with his family, the apartment that is an entire order of magnitude too large for one measly little man… it’s a lot to handle without help.

So, swallowing hard, he asks for help.

“Are you sure you don’t want to vlog this?” Jace asks, the first one to arrive aside from Max and Rafe. He sounds rough despite his immaculate clothes and his clean-shaven face. His smile isn’t quite reaching his eyes. 

Magnus curses himself for not checking in with his siblings-in-law until now.

Ah, well. The deed has been done, and he’s checking in _now_. He sweeps Jace into a chair, pouring him some orange juice. “I think that chapter of my life is over,” he says honestly, offering the vodka as well. Jace shakes his head. “Suit yourself,” Magnus hums, taking the seat beside Jace. “Tell me how you’ve been doing. Are you taking time off?”

“…Are you _kidding_?” Jace says, voice still dull, eyes still distant. He looks tired, like he’s actually feeling his age for once instead of living in a perpetual rerun of his college dudebro days. “I was back to work the day after the fucking funeral.” 

The end of the sentence sharpens as he speaks, words becoming a knife blade, his face darkening for just a moment. Then it softens again, into something tired, and he says, “I just don’t get it. You were the _vlog guy_. That’s who you were. How can you just… move on?”

He’s getting at something larger, something they can both see but that’s so hard to explain, to give boundaries to. Magnus can feel the desperation bleeding out of him—the way he longs to stand up and pace away, the fact that it’s clear that he’s okay only as long as he’s working, as long as he’s in motion. How losing his brother was like losing a piece of his soul and he hasn’t stopped long enough to let it catch up to him.

The dull ache in Magnus’s chest flares, pulsing in time with the beat of his heart. Magnus wants to tell him to leave, tell him that he can’t do this, not right now—but just as Magnus isn’t walking this path alone, neither is Jace, and the least he can do is lend a hand.

So he’s honest. He tells Jace the truth, watching as Jace’s exhales get wetter and wetter by the second—that losing something doesn’t mean you lose everything that came with it, that the past is always part of the present, even if it’s just in the form of memories. 

“…I miss him. So much,” he admits, and Jace’s voice cracks on a laugh because they both knew what this was about, what all this was _really about_. “But what can I do if not keep going?”

“You have a point there,” Jace says, looking off into the distance as he swipes at his eyes. “You definitely have a point.”

***

It doesn’t take long for the rest of the gang to arrive. Tessa and Jem show up hand in hand, and Catarina arrives with Ragnor and Raphael sulking at her heels a few minutes later. Izzy pulls up soon after that, hauling with her Jace’s boyfriend, Simon, and her girlfriend, Clary. They settle in, taking advantage of the refreshments that Magnus bought at the supermarket that morning. And as they settle in, Magnus watches Izzy, trying to catch her eye.

She looks okay, on the surface. Where Jace is tired, his body only slightly more relaxed than it was when he arrived, Izzy is cheerful, bright. Unfortunately, though, Magnus can see the cracks in the facade—how she’s talking in a voice just slightly too loud and laughing just slightly too long to be convincing. He tries to catch her on her own but after the third dismissal the message is clear—she’s coping, and she’ll find her way back to him. Just… not yet. Not yet.

Magnus takes a moment to accept this and then, after he fetches the kids from Rafe’s room, he gathers everyone’s attention. He thanks them all for turning up for him, trying not to make things too emotional, and then outlines a plan to clear out every room and box them up, one by one by one. 

The living room.

The kitchen.

Rafe’s old bedroom, Max’s old bedroom.

The bathrooms…

…and, after everything else is done and the day is bordering on night, the master bedroom.

Magnus watches it all disappear into cardboard boxes, and his heart beats, and beats, and beats.

***

The start of the school year comes soon, sweeping Magnus up in its challenge. The oldest in most of his classes by far, Magnus is the odd one out, though not, for once, because of his fashion choices. He actually feels quite at home in that sense—not the only one wearing sequins, or glitter, or spikes. He fits right in, in that regard. And in others. The competitive nature of it, the quick turn of fall fashion to winter fashion to spring fashion soothes aches and smooths edges that Magnus wasn’t even aware he had.

It is, all things considered, exactly what Magnus needs.

One semester passes. Magnus gets through finals and comes out the other side with the knowledge that he still has a long way to go but that this, like anything worthwhile in life, is manageable so long as it’s taken one step at a time. He still celebrates, toasting in the new year with Jace come December, feeling the loss of his husband and the absence of Izzy but pushing through them both. He checks in with Rafe, and with Max, watching with excitement as the kids find people to love, as children of their own come into their lives. Rafe isn’t ready for fatherhood just yet, but Max dives into it headfirst, the first to bring a grandchild home to Magnus. 

She’s a beautiful baby girl, and if Magnus cries a little into her wispy brown hair, well, no one has to know.

And so it goes. His second semester comes, and with it the day that marks one year since he last saw his husband on this earth, last held his hand. Magnus waits—breath bated, balanced on the edge like he’s standing on a knife-blade—to see if the loss will consume him this time around. But it doesn’t, and then that, too, has passed and it’s summer once more, bright and warm and alive, the earth spinning and spinning and spinning with Magnus along for the ride. One day at a time the years begin to pass until, soon enough, he’s reached his second year of school. And then his third. And then his fourth. And though the grief is always there, the absence always at his side, he manages to keep going, keep living, keep fighting. He keeps on, step after step after step, offering an invitation to Izzy at New Years every year until the year she _finally_ accepts. 

She comes early, a tentative smile on her lips and a bottle of wine in her hands. Magnus lets her right in, and they sit together for hours, talking and laughing and reconnecting all the way up until Jace arrives, and then it’s the three of them, toasting in the new year, Jace and Magnus each pressing a kiss to one of Izzy’s cheeks just the same as Alec and Jace used to do once upon a time, and though Izzy’s eyes fill with tears she’s smiling and laughing and Magnus knows, he knows that they’re healing. As best they can, all three of them, together. Living on, following dreams, fighting the good fight.

“I’m glad we met,” Izzy says, at the end of the night, just before she collapses on Magnus’s guest bed to sleep away the wine headache. “I’m glad that he had you, and you had him.”

Magnus’s smile may be small, but it is genuine as he says, his voice shaking, “Me, too.”

***

School wraps up the following semester, and Magnus walks at graduation to much applause and, to his delight, a few wolf-whistles. He then gets down to the real work—building a clothing company from the ground up. He has a vision for it, a seed that was sowed sometime back around the year that Alec proposed to him that has now grown into a tree, hardy and tough and nearly impossible to dig out. 

See, unlike his classmates he doesn’t want to work with supermodels. He doesn’t want to work with your average everyday businesswoman, either. He wants to work with people who are so often shunned in fashion, the people who never get to feel strong and capable and magical. Sick people, disabled people, queer people—those are _his_ people, and he wants to help make their lives easier in some small way.

Thus, the High Warlock is born, a company that caters to people with special clothing needs. It’s costuming, formal, and everyday wear that’s designed to give people power in their own lives, all complete with a business model based around an ability to do custom everything at a reasonable price. 

The first year, it’s just Magnus, using tax-deductible money from his savings to fly around the country and work with anyone who reaches out to him. By the second year, he’s picked up three employees, based in three different cities around the states, who can fly out to get a client’s exact measurements as well as their vision for their wardrobe. Year three sees another increase, and Magnus manages to buy a building in Brooklyn, an official home base for the tailors and seamstresses he’s brought on board to supplement his own two hands. And then year four, and year five, until Magnus has enough revenue coming into expand from just the High Warlock of Brooklyn to the High Warlock of Los Angeles, and the High Warlock of London, and even a High Warlock of Lima, Peru—before he’s kicked out of the country and told never to return, anyway.

It’s a dance, he learns. Managing business in three major cities across the United States and England, overseeing all the people who work under him all the way from management to production… it’s all about choreography, chemistry. Find the right music, and the people will move. Find strong leads, and the rest of the cast will fall into place. 

Find balance… trust… and beauty will come.

It’s hard work. Rewarding, but hard. He’s busy more often than not. Still, he finds the time to take on a client or two himself, throwing himself whole-heartedly into tricky custom work as he sews late into the night in the Brooklyn production house. 

He shakes off the extra bits of thread and fabric cuttings before slipping the jacket onto the mannequin, stepping back to admire his work.

If only Alec could see him now, he thinks, and flattens his palm against the ring hanging under his shirt.

***

People often think that to be a person, you must be whole unto yourself. You must be a monolith, you must be self-contained, you must never allow yourself to be contaminated by _someone else_.

This is a noble idea, but the reality is, in fact, the very opposite. What is a human if not a composite made up of all the humans who came before them, the humans who walk beside them? Other people become part of you the moment you are born, the moment you allow them into your life, and once a person is a part of you it is just short of _impossible_ to untie their essence from yours. They become part of your mannerisms, part of your history, part of your soul, for better or worse. 

It can be hard to see it as it happens. Sometimes it occurs through upheaval, clashes of personalities like the quake of the earth itself, the dust settling minutes or seconds later on topography intrinsically changed. More often, however, it’s closer to the growth of rock formations in a cave, a slow drip drip drip of thoughts and mannerisms until what was once flat, untouched stone is now pillars and stalactites and stalagmites, reaching toward the sky somewhere far above. But no matter how it happens, and whether it is for good or bad, the truth of the matter is that other people take up space inside you. 

You are not alone. You are _never_ alone.

***

On the morning that Magnus wakes with ghosts on his mind, it’s been ten years, to the day, since Alec’s death. His mother’s white lace dress and the brim of the hat that hides her face slips slowly from his mind. He has never once seen her face. He has a feeling that’s by design.

He breathes out a long, slow breath. 

The morning progresses. There is an absence in the bed with him, an absence behind him as he puts on his eyeliner in the vanity mirror, an absence at the counter at his side as he cooks breakfast at the stove. Magnus sits, alone, at the breakfast table, with a serving cooling in the pan behind him, and he thinks. 

He knows what they say about ghosts. About repetition… and repetition… and repetition… slipping into thoughts about video reel, and soundbites, and _raw, enduring data_.

It occurs to him that while Alec has never once visited in his dreams, Magnus is still surrounded, all the same, by the remnants of Alec, digitalized and immortalized and spinning on, and on, and on.

He pulls out his old video camera. And his heart beats, and beats, and beats.

*+1*

The final clip is short, longer than the first but not nearly as long as the others.

It begins, once again, with Alec, making a stony face at the camera. He sits in a hospital bed, sitting up with a nasal cannula hooked on his ears. It is near the end—not quite the _very_ end, but close enough to see the age in the gray streaked in his hair, the wear in the slimness of his body.

Magnus, aged but not as weary, sits at his side with an arm thrown over his shoulders. The camera, propped up on a table before them, watches him as he watches Alec, a smile already tugging at his lips.

“Okay,” he says, clearing his throat. “Are you ready?”

Alec nods, face stoic. “Do your worst.”

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Hatch.”

“Hatch, who?”

“…God bless you.”

Alec blinks, frowning. “That’s awful,” he says.

“No, it’s not! It’s a perfectly respectable knock-knock joke! Fine, fine, let me try again: knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Boo.”

“Boo, who?”

“Hey, don’t cry! Eh, eh?” Magnus shuffles, leaning forward until he can catch Alec’s eye and wriggling his eyebrows. “You have to admit that one was funny.”

Alec purses his lips, turning his head to meet Magnus’s eyes. “It wasn’t,” he says, but Magnus continues to lean closer, grinning wide, until he’s close enough to press a kiss to Alec’s nose.

“One more,” he says, from hardly an inch away. “You ready?”

Alec nods, his eyes on Magnus and Magnus alone. His lips, still pursed, twitch at the corners.

Magnus settles closer, speaking low and serious. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Juno.”

“Juno who?”

“ _Juno I love you, right_?” Magnus says, and before Alec can react he’s peppering his husband’s face with kisses. Light and quick, they come and come, until the twitch becomes a lift becomes a laugh, Alec’s stony face cracking right into a smile as he melts under the assault. He’s so clearly happy, they both are, even as Alec starts to cough. Magnus waits, a smile on his face, until the fit comes to an end, and then he presses one last kiss to Alec’s cheek. “Got you,” he whispers, and the clip comes to an end.

***

A moment later, the video from the beginning is back, coalescing like dew on early morning leaves once more. The man on the screen is the same as he was at the introduction to the video, but after the six clips he’s recognizable as Magnus—an older, grayer, more lined version, but still the same as he ever is, ever was. 

He’s leaning forward now, hands folded in his lap as he turns a ring, his wedding band, around his finger. Around and around it goes for a long moment, until he raises his head once more. He is as serious as he’s ever been as his eyes meet the camera. 

“My husband died ten years ago today,” he says, voice slow but sure. “He fought for thirty-nine years, until the day came when he couldn’t fight anymore. His heart stopped, and the world kept going. I kept going. My heart… it’s still beating. I can feel it, here and now, in my chest.”

He pauses there, palm pressed flat to his chest. Then, one deep breath later, he clears his throat and says, “The clips I showed you… they were just a small piece of my husband’s life, the smallest sliver of his strength and his vitality. Just a shadow of who he was and what we lost.”

“Still, I’m glad that I could share them with you today.”

“Because it’s… it’s been hard. So _unbelievably_ hard. But…”

And here he smiles, tears glittering in his eyes.

“It was worth it. Fighting on after he was gone was worth it. For my family, and my friends, and all the leftover dreams that came true. To be able to sit here and watch the footage he left behind and keep his memory alive.”

“Thank you _so much_ for letting me share that memory with you today. It means everything to me.”

“Alec was the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean that. Alexander… you were the _best thing_ that _ever_ happened to me. You gave me stability, and confidence, and love. You gave me hope.”

He breathes out, sniffing quietly.

“…The last thing you said to me was that you’ll be waiting for me. However long it takes, you’ll be waiting.”

A tear drops, and Magnus smiles, swiping it away.

“I have fifty-four years behind me now. There are another forty in front of me. It will take a while yet, but one day I will leave this life. I don’t know when… and I’m not sure how. But they say that ghosts don’t change their minds, and if that’s true… if that’s true then I know you will still be there, waiting for me, on the other side.”

He laughs, clear and strong. “I have _so much_ to tell you when we meet up again.”

And the video fades to black, the words _Ave Atque Vale, Alexander Gideon Lightwood-Bane_ rising, in white, across the screen. Hail and farewell, Alexander.

Hail and farewell.

***

I see you every time that I close my eyes

I hum every lullaby that you used to sing

You never know the last time you'll see someone

So give them all of your love

Cause they'll disappear

When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for

All Who Remain

When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for

All Who Remain

All Who Remain

All Who Remain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy hell. This one hurt. I hope it was a good hurt, but alas. In any case, I just wanted to say thank you for sticking around! Let me know what you think! I accept critiques, screaming, keysmashing, tomatoes, and anything else you might think to throw at me.


End file.
